Real Murders of Orange County (2020): Season 2, Episode 10 - Jewels and Jinxes - full transcript

- Mario Rodriguez Hernandez

was a 68-year-old
jewelry salesman.

- My grandfather brought
us here from Mexico

when I was five years old.

He used to have a jewelry
store in Santa Ana.

In 2005, my grandfather
went missing.

- It was completely
out character for Mario

to just disappear, to not call
his family, his granddaughter.

- When he went missing,
I became his voice.

I became his advocate.

- It immediately becomes clear



that there's something
more significant about this

than just a run-of-the-mill
missing persons case.

- A woman answers the phone.

She says, "I had an appointment

with Mario that morning,
but he never showed up."

- They planned to kill Mario
because of the information

that was provided by the psychic

on how this person had
a curse on their family.

- She's the one that has
possession of jewelry

that Mario probably
was trying to sell.

She decides she gonna
help the police.

- Police got this big break
in discovering Mario's van.

They found some rope,

and they found
empty jewelry boxes.



- Santa Ana gets information

that yielded DNA, but it
doesn't match anything.

- Mario had disappeared
with no trace.

The family was
growing desperate.

- They just laughed and said,

"I'm gonna take it to the grave,

and you guys will
never find his body."

- Santa Ana is a
predominantly Latino community

I think about 98%.

Hardworking people.

It's a place where
people thrive.

- I think a lot of
immigrants are able to find

and fulfill their
American dream.

And especially in
neighborhoods like Santa Ana,

you look at other
people's success stories

within your neighborhood.

And that right there
is the inspiration

and motivation.

- Growing up in
Orange County for us,

being first-generation
from Mexico,

it gave us opportunity
to succeed in life.

- Just about every person
that works in Santa Ana

or is involved in any
business is of Latino origin.

It's the heart of the Latino
community in Orange County.

It's basically what it is.

narrator: Kissed by the sun
and gentle, fragrant breezes

of the orange blossoms
for which it's named,

Orange County holds its
residents in a warm embrace.

And as the seat
of Orange County,

Santa Ana entices those seeking

to make the American
dream their reality.

- My name is Adriana Rodriguez,

and I am Mario
Rodriguez's granddaughter.

My grandfather brought
us here from Mexico

when I was five years old.

His advice was always,

"You can be anything
you wanna be,

as long as you set
your mind to it."

Being here in America with
the opportunities he had,

he was also proud to
be Mexican American.

He just full of
just love for us.

- Mario Rodriguez Hernandez
was a 68-year-old man

who lived in Santa Ana.

He was a wholesale jeweler.

He at one time had
his own business.

But as he was getting older,

he was tending to transition
into just selling privately

to several clients
that he already knew.

Mario would carry a large amount

of valuable jewelry
in his briefcase,

and he would go
to people's homes.

- My name's Larry Yellin.

I was an Orange County
prosecutor for 22 years.

March 18th, 2005, Mario,

just like any other
day, is gonna go out.

He has his little
briefcase of jewelry

that he puts together
that he takes with him.

Surprisingly, on that day,

he took all of his
jewelry with him.

He loaded all up into his van

and went off to
his appointments.

- Mario was very
close with his family,

but especially
his granddaughter,

because Mario had heart issues.

He had suffered a
stroke. He was on meds.

Adriana would call
him a couple of times

during the day to
check in with him,

see if he took his meds.

However, by late afternoon,

she still hadn't been
able to connect with him.

So they were kind of
getting a little concerned.

It was unusual.

- And I kept getting phone
calls through the day

from this nurse, the lady
that would take care of him.

And she said, "Well, it's
3:00 in the afternoon.

Grandpa hasn't come home
to take his medication."

I was like, "Well, maybe
he'll be home for dinner,"

because it was Friday,

and every Friday we
had a family dinner.

Narrator: But this particular
Friday does not go as planned.

When Mario fails to
return home for dinner,

Adriana's concern transforms
into outright alarm.

- I got to his house
around 7:00 p.m.,

and that was already like 12
hours my grandpa had left.

Well, my first thought was
he had a stroke somewhere,

and he's in his car.

So we went out, we
drove, we came back,

and I called the police.

- My name is Oswaldo Borraez.

I am an investigative
news reporter

with KMEX in Los Angeles.

Mario was a person who stayed
in touch with his family.

It was completely out
of character for Mario

to just disappear, to
not show up to dinner,

to not call his family,
his granddaughter.

- And I said, "I need to file
a missing person report."

And they said, "You
have to wait 48 hours."

And I said, "No, my
grandfather had a stroke.

He's probably in his truck,
and he can't call anybody."

- The police say, "It's just
been a few hours, you know?

And you don't have
any hard evidence

that anything could
have happened to him."

So they told her,

"We can't file a
missing persons report."

- So I think they frustrate her,

they disappoint her,
and they turn her away.

- I am one that believes
that if something or someone

is taken from your
family, you speak up.

And you seek answers.

And you investigate even if
you have to do it yourself.

- Often time in Latino families,

a lot of times they
come from countries

where they can't depend
on the government.

They're gonna get the word out.

They're gonna be
asking questions.

They're gonna be posting flyers.

- My grandfather always told us,

"It's you, your sister,
and your mother."

He said, "If anything
ever happens to me,

"I know that you're
gonna be strong,

and you're gonna help them."

And I took those words to heart.

When he went missing,
I became his voice.

I became his advocate.

- So Adriana is able to obtain
a list of phone numbers.

Recent phone numbers from
her grandfather's phone.

- So I called the phone company,

and I told them, "This
is my grandfather.

"I'm his granddaughter.

And my grandfather
had a stroke."

And I was able to
get the information

of the last person
that called him.

- She calls the last
number on there,

and a woman answers the phone.

And she is a client of Mario's.

And she's able to
tell Adriana that,

"Well, yes, I had an
appointment with Mario

that morning, but
he never showed up."

He wasn't in the hospital.
No one found his car.

He kind of just vanished.

So finally, 48 hours has passed.

So Adriana is able to
go back to Santa Ana PD

and file a formal
missing persons report.

- My name is Jim Schnabl.

2005, I was the sergeant

in charge of the
family crimes unit

for the Santa Ana
Police Department.

As I gather some
information, it becomes clear

that there's something
more significant about this

than just a run-of-the-mill
missing persons case.

Mario was very detail-oriented,

very punctual when he
makes his appointments

as part of his business.

So he's got a regular
routine that he does.

He's driving around
in the neighborhoods,

known to have a lot of jewelry,

which makes him a target.

So when he doesn't
follow his usual routine,

it immediately raises red flags.

- So they follow bank cards,

they follow credit
cards, phone records.

But he actually left in a van.

So he had a vehicle
that was missing.

So they'll put out, you know,

the all-points
bulletin, the APB.

Now that helps,

because Santa Ana Police
can be looking for the van.

- We start investigating
every avenue,

every person that he may
have come in contact with,

every phone number
that might be related,

every business client
that he may have had.

Narrator: Including the last
client Mario's granddaughter

says he talked to by phone
on the day he went missing.

- We reach out and make contact

with her at her residence,

interview her, and she
claims to the investigators

that Mario never
made it to the house

and that she hasn't seen him.

So far, we hadn't found anybody

that had talked to
him, heard from him.

His cell phone wasn't operative.

- Mario had disappeared
with no trace.

There was no video.

There was nothing at all
that could provide detectives

with any leads at that point.

The family was
growing desperate.

- And then a big,
amazing alarm goes off.

And that is the
discovery of the van.

- The initial indication
that there was a strong smell

of gasoline inside the van,
that kind of sets off an alarm

that maybe this was an
attempt to hide evidence.

- So the officers go
to this house thinking,

"This is a potential lead.
We gotta go to this house."

Who's there when they
knock at the door?

It's not a person they thought
they were going to see.

- Police are very interested
in what she may remember,

what new information,
new phone calls,

anything she can offer.

narrator: Mario Hernandez,
a beloved patriarch

and businessmen from
Santa Ana, California,

has been missing
for nearly one week.

Just as it's beginning to
seem as if Mario has vanished

without a trace, a key
piece of evidence emerges

that could change the course
of the entire investigation.

- The van appears
parked in Mission Viejo.

And a woman who
leaves every morning

and takes her child to
school notices this van,

and notices it there again,
and realizes it hasn't moved.

And so she's suspicious
and calls the sheriff.

- I rolled over
to that location,

saw the van, saw the
way that it was parked,

and it looked like it had
been parked and abandoned

by somebody, you know,
unknown at this point.

But it was in a place
that we hadn't... in all

of our investigation,
there was no indication

that Mario had any kind of ties

to that area of the county.

- My name is William Lackey.

I'm a retired investigator for
the Santa Ana Fire Department.

Whenever you have
something that's connected

to a victim of a crime,

especially a missing
persons type of case,

a personal vehicle,
and potentially one

that they were in just
before their disappearance,

is potentially gonna provide
just a wealth of evidence.

It could potentially
be the only crime scene

in a missing persons case

and be very important
to the investigation.

narrator: When investigators
descend upon the van,

they make a
concerning discovery.

- The initial indication
was that there was

a strong smell of
gasoline inside the van.

In my experience, when you
have a missing persons case

and you find a vehicle

that potentially has
ignitable liquid inside,

that kind of sets off an alarm

that maybe this was an
attempt to hide evidence.

- Someone may have tried
to commit an arson,

set the vehicle on fire.

When they also look through
the interior of the van,

they found a pair
of latex gloves.

- Finding the gloves in the car,

it's an interesting
piece of evidence,

and we're sending
it out for DNA.

Now, we don't know
who was wearing them,

but certainly we
need to investigate

to try to figure that out.

- They're taking that
vehicle apart basically.

And the pieces of evidence that
were found inside that vehicle

are being subjected

to all kinds of
different forensic tests.

- DNA as a crime scene
investigation tool,

you need two things, right?

You need to find the
DNA in the crime scene,

and then you need
something to compare it to.

Santa Ana gets information

that the gloves
have yielded DNA,

but it doesn't match anything.

- When we do the DNA
test on the gloves,

we come up with a
foreign source of DNA,

but no Mario DNA.

narrator: Undeterred,
detectives do whatever

they can to find a suspect
who fits the DNA profile.

- In discovering Mario's
van, they found some rope,

and they found
empty jewelry boxes.

And that could possibly indicate

that someone had
stolen the jewelry.

- They started looking
into the history

of Mario's life.

And they uncovered that in 1999,

Mario had been a
victim of a robbery.

- Mario had been a
victim of a crime

just... I think, five
or six years earlier.

Pretty violent armed robbery.

As a jewelry salesman, you
know, they took his stuff.

Now he's missing.
His stuff is missing.

- Police do investigate
these former assailants,

but they discover
they all had alibis.

- One of the suspects
from the original robbery

was still in prison,

and another suspect wasn't
even in the country.

- As we conduct
the investigation

through the end of March

and into the beginning of April,

we're not coming up with
any leads that lead us

to anybody that may have
done something with Mario.

So we start circling back
and re-interviewing some

of the people that we
initially spoke to.

- So the officers then
at some point decide

to go that last hint, right?

That last call that Mario made.

The number belongs
to Rebeca Nivarez,

a customer of Mario's,

and that she had an
appointment with him that day,

but that he never followed
through, never appeared.

narrator: Hoping for a lead,

police visit the home
of Rebeca Nivarez.

- They knock on the door,
and a young woman answers.

And it's not Rebeca.

It's Rebeca's
daughter, Claudia Diaz.

- Claudia says, "My mother
decided to move to Colorado."

Well, she had no
connection to Colorado.

There were no
relatives in Colorado,

and then the timing
really is suspicious

in that, when did
this all happen?

March 25th, just
a few days really

after Mario disappeared.

narrator: A few weeks after
traveling jewelry salesman,

Mario Hernandez,
mysteriously disappeared,

detectives have zeroed
in on one of his clients.

The daughter of
Rebeca Nivarez says

her mom abruptly left town

shortly after Mario
was reported missing.

- So the officers go
to this house thinking,

"This is a potential lead.
We gotta go to this house."

Who's there when they
knock at the door?

It's Claudia. Claudia
is Rebeca's daughter.

It's not Rebeca,

the person they thought
they were going to see.

- Claudia claimed that
her mother, Rebeca,

went to Colorado,
because she was alleging

that she no longer could
live in Orange County,

either for financial reasons
or any other reasons.

And at the same time,

her son had decided
to move to Mexico.

- Claudia informs us that
her mother has left town,

and she hasn't spoken to her.

And before leaving, she
had a lot of jewelry

with her is what
Claudia recalls,

and that the mother had
given her a pair of earrings

to hold onto.

So Claudia gives us the earrings

that her mother had given her,

and we start to investigate
the origin of the earrings.

And we're able to
track the earrings down

to the jeweler

that sold those particular
earrings to Mario out of LA.

narrator: When detectives
learn that the earrings

came from Mario's
missing collection,

they check the local pawn shops,

a common destination
for stolen goods.

- The rules in the city
of Santa Ana are strict,

that anybody who pawns
anything has to leave a slip

with their thumbprint on it,
and those slips get maintained.

And those slips get shared
with law enforcement.

- When Santa Ana Police went
around asking pawn shops,

they did discover one
had several receipts

from Rebeca Nivarez...

That showed that she had indeed

sold about 20 pieces of jewelry

for a grand total of $2,500.

- Lots of slips in the
name of Rebeca Nivarez

with her thumbprint on it,
so there was no question,

Rebeca had pawned all
of Mario's jewelry.

And they were all
dated March 18th, 2005,

the very day he disappeared.

- This is just another
piece of evidence

that really ties her to it.

So not just the jewelry
that Mario had on him

on the day that he disappeared,

but the fact that she
pawned it on the day

that he disappeared.

So it really starts
to connect her

to the immediate
disappearance of Mario

on that particular day.

- At this point in
the investigation,

Claudia is the only person

that's giving them new
information about Rebeca.

So police are very interested
in what Claudia has to say,

what she may remember,
what new information,

new phone calls,
anything she can offer.

- She's the one
living in the house

that Mario's supposed
to be going to.

She's the one that has
possession of jewelry

that Mario probably
was trying to sell

that was probably
stolen from him, right?

So she becomes a suspect

or fears that she is
becoming a suspect.

And so for those
multiple reasons,

Claudia decides she's
going to help the police.

- Detectives, in
talking to Claudia,

convince Claudia to
talk to her brother,

Ricardo, in Mexico.

On April 20th, Claudia
makes a phone call

while detectives from
Santa Ana PD are present.

And Ricardo tells her
that Rebeca Nivarez,

their mother, is in
Mexico with Mario

and that they did not want
to be bothered or found

but could not
explain why or how.

That obviously was very
suspicious to the detectives,

and now they knew that somebody
was not telling the truth

about something at that point.

- Claudia was lied
to by her mother.

She never went to Colorado.

And so that really
adds to Claudia

and law enforcement's suspicion.

- So police wanna follow up a
little bit more with Rebeca,

because these differing
stories are arising.

So they try and acquire some
of Rebeca's phone records.

Now police are gonna
focus on Rebeca

as possibly a main
suspect in this case.

- What we did was we asked
Claudia for a DNA sample

to compare against the sample
that was found in the glove,

which was in Mario's vehicle.

- Claudia willingly cooperates

and actually gives them a
coat that belonged to her mom,

that would possibly
have some DNA on it.

- But we recognize that the
process to get DNA results

is gonna be time consuming.

It's gonna take several months.

Narrator: With
Rebeca in Mexico

and without sufficient evidence

to extradite her
for questioning,

the case comes to a standstill.

- By this time, you
know, we're frustrated.

It's been a couple months
without my grandpa.

We're losing hope.
I see my mom.

I see her just getting
old in front of my eyes

just from sadness.

- April to December
7th has gone by.

The family is desperate.

Even though the case
appears to go cold,

detectives don't stop working.

Narrator: Police
are at a loss,

and they're not the only ones.

- I wish the van
could talk to us.

I wish the van would tell
us what had happened.

You know, like, I
would sit in the van

and look for evidence myself.

I just wished at that time

that the van could tell me
the story of what happened.

- From Adriana's perspective,

this is excruciatingly
slow, this process.

- And the more time that passes,

the less likely this is
gonna have a happy ending.

narrator: Mario
Hernandez's family

would give anything to be

in the jewelry salesman's
loving presence again.

But they have a feeling
he's no longer alive.

And with Mario's shady
client, Rebeca Nivarez,

hiding out in Mexico,

loved ones fear
they may never know

if she had a hand in
Mario's disappearance.

- Cases like this, especially
with a person missing,

there's so much unknown, right?

Even though it's horrible to
find that your loved one died,

at least you have found that
your loved one had died.

When someone's missing,
you suspect it,

but yet you don't really
get to heal or have answers.

And that's really difficult.

- When he went missing, he
had a little rocking horse

on the table he left behind.

He wanted to sand the
horse, and paint it,

and get it ready for my niece.

And she was two at the time.

And when he went missing,

that horse was
left on the table.

- Adriana Rodriguez would
often call and check in

with Santa Ana PD,

"Is there anything new? What's
going on with the case?"

She contacts the media to try
and get them to run a story,

run his picture, just try
and keep it in people's minds

and have people
be on the lookout,

just in the hopes that
someone knows something

and is willing to come forward.

- They kept hoping that
anybody in the community

in Santa Ana, or in
the Orange County Area,

or Los Angeles could
provide any information,

any details that could
end up in him being found.

- So I did everything
possible to find him

and to get the story out.

I blew it up.

I was very pushy,

and I would call the Santa
Ana PD every day, every hour.

And I'll be like,
"What's the update?"

And I remember I got
them so tired of me,

because they finally said,
"You know, your grandfather

is not the only person
that has gone missing."

I feel for the rest
of the families,

but this is my grandfather.

And I need to know
what happened.

narrator: But with
the main suspect

somewhere south of the border,

closing out the case
will be difficult.

Thankfully, an
unexpected encounter

soon turns things around.

- So months have gone by.

But things perk up again when
something happens with Claudia.

Claudia goes into a
market in Santa Ana,

and she sees her mom, and
her mom is working there.

She's actually, you know,
working on... they set up

a table on the end cap of the
aisles and give away samples.

That's her. She's there.

"When did you get back?
You know, what's going on?

Did you know the police
were looking for you?"

- When she confronts her
mother basically saying,

"Look, how can you
be working here?

"How can you be with yourself?

"How can you accept living

with what allegedly
she might have done?"

- They get into a
bit of an argument,

and Rebeca goes into the back
where only employees can go

and kind of just leaves
Claudia out there.

Claudia comes back and
finds out the next day

that Rebeca's not
coming back to work.

She's now disappeared again.

- The last we knew,
Rebeca was in Mexico,

and that's the information
that Claudia had provided.

Now that she was back local,

that really changed
things for us.

narrator: Now that
detectives have proof

that Rebeca is
back on U.S. soil,

they revisit the
foreign DNA source

found on the gloves
in Mario's van.

- Police are looking to see

whether there could
be any type of match

between Rebeca's DNA and
maybe some of the evidence

that was found
inside Mario's van,

specifically those latex gloves.

- When we had the
gloves out of the van,

it was initially determined

that there was a
foreign source of DNA,

but we had no
connection to anybody.

- If they can place Rebeca

at the crime scene
within that van,

that is the most direct evidence

they have at that point.

narrator: When the
DNA results come back,

both Rebeca and
Claudia are matches,

but not in the way
investigators expected.

- The result that we got back

was that there was a
possible familial match.

Not only is Claudia
a familial match

to whoever left the DNA
sample in the glove,

Rebeca's also a familial match

to whoever left the DNA
sample in the glove.

Whoever the person was,

was a family member of
both Rebeca and Claudia.

- Police now are saying,
"Now we have two suspects."

- The psychic had told her
that there was a curse.

- Claudia has been
very cooperative.

So police actually ask her

to make a phone call to Mexico,

and they want this phone
call to be recorded.

Claudia calls Santa Ana PD

and says that her
mother tells her,

"I have something to tell you,
but you can't tell anyone."

narrator: Thanks to a
unique DNA familial match,

investigators now know
who left behind the gloves

in Mario Hernandez's
abandoned van.

It's not Rebeca Nivarez
or her daughter, Claudia,

but someone they
know all too well.

- DNA will reveal who
your siblings are.

And so while the DNA sample

that Claudia gave
excluded Claudia

as being the person who
left the DNA in the van,

it inculpated a
relative of hers.

Narrator: That relative
is Rebeca's son

and Claudia's brother,

19-year-old Ricardo
Diaz-Nivarez.

- Police now have two suspects.

You have Rebeca, who
is directly involved,

and now you have
Ricardo, her son,

who may have actually
carried out the crime.

Narrator: When Claudia reveals
the details of a conversation

she had with her mother,

Rebeca, investigators
are stunned.

- Claudia calls Santa Ana PD

and says that her mother had
just called her the day before.

And in the course of
this conversation,

Rebeca Nivarez
tells her daughter,

"I have something to tell you,
but you can't tell anyone."

She had gone to a palm reader,

and the palm reader told
her she was in danger.

- The psychic had told her

that there was a curse
on Rebeca Nivarez,

and that according
to the reading,

Mario Rodriguez Hernandez

fit the description
of this person

that allegedly had
put a curse on her.

- It is very common
in Latino communities

to seek out the
guidance and advice

of either a palm reader,
what they call a "brujera."

In the same way that some
people may follow the advice

of their local priest,
or rabbi, or minister,

there are other communities

that follow the
advice of a psychic.

- She said their mother
first swore her to secrecy,

and then told her
that Mario had in fact

come to the house on the
day that he disappeared,

and that Ricardo was there.

- Ricardo had found
out about the curse.

And that because Ricardo
now feared the curse,

when Mario came over,
Ricardo confronted him.

There was some violence
between the two of them

and that Mario actually
was the aggressor.

But Ricardo, defending himself,

attacks Mario and kills him.

- For the very first time,

you have a confession
of an alleged murder.

narrator: To corroborate
Rebeca's story,

investigators need
to talk to Ricardo

who's been in Mexico
since Mario vanished.

- So what Santa Ana Police

is really focused
on and interested in

is if they can talk
directly to Ricardo.

Claudia has been
very cooperative.

So police actually ask her

to make a phone
call to her father

and her brother
who are in Mexico.

And they want this phone
call to be recorded.

- The person that answers
the phone identifies himself

as Claudia's dad,

which she also verifies
as being her father.

- Claudia actually
places this phone call

from the Santa Ana PD.

She's in a room.

She's got an
investigator next to her

who can help her guide
this conversation.

And it's a pretty
short phone call,

but she's just
asking around like,

"Oh, is Ricardo
there with you?"

And her father says,
"Yeah, he's here with me."

- She asks for the
address, where he's at,

the physical address,

alleging that she wants
to send some things.

That would be nothing
uncommon in her family.

And he provides the
address to Claudia.

- Well, now they have
a physical location

where Ricardo is
supposedly staying,

and where they can
actually track him down.

- She decides to
go for it and say,

"Look, here's what Mom told
me. Mom told me you did this.

"But she told me you did
this in self-defense,

that he was attacking her."

And Ricardo... and I
remember very chilling.

It was, "Why didn't she
just tell you the truth?"

And the implication there is

that there was no self-defense.

- They planned to kill Mario
because of the information

that was provided by the psychic

on how this person had
a curse on their family

and that the curse
would be lifted

if that person was eliminated.

- Claudia had hoped
that there was some,

if not innocent explanation,

some mitigation to the conduct,
that maybe it was an attack,

and that he was
defending his mother.

- Instead, he tells her
that it was planned,

and that he's sure
the man is dead,

and that it... "Was Mom with you

when the body
was disappeared?"

And the answer
is, "Of course."

- The important thing
about Ricardo's version

is that it directly
implicates Rebeca

in planning this murder
and prompting her son

to take part in this for her.

- From an investigation
standpoint, you know,

this phone call really
solves the case.

You just want to
know that you know

beyond a reasonable
doubt what happened

and that the person that
you're gonna hold responsible

is responsible.

And that statement,
that gave him that.

We filed murder charges
against Ricardo.

That's a no-bail warrant,

meaning there's no
ability once arrested

for him to post bail to get out.

Not quite two weeks
after we filed

the charges against Ricardo,

Santa Ana Police, they
were able to find Rebeca.

I think she was
living in Anaheim,

and they were able to
find her and arrest her.

And we charged her
with murder as well.

- So with the confession
and the DNA evidence,

we're able to get a warrant

for Ricardo's
arrest for homicide.

But the problem that we have
then is that he's in Mexico,

and we need to get
an extradition.

It's not a guarantee when
we do an extradition process

that it's gonna work out.

narrator: After a year of
unwavering police work,

investigators are finally close

to bringing Mario
Hernandez's alleged killers,

Rebeca Nivarez, and her
son, Ricardo, to justice.

But first, officials
have to extradite Ricardo

from Mexico to
the United States.

- Ricardo has
confessed to Claudia

that he in fact murdered
Mario Rodriguez Hernandez

and that he allegedly murdered
him directed by his mother

because of this alleged curse
that the psychic had mentioned.

- We are pretty excited
about getting Ricardo back.

So we go through and get the
extradition process started.

We have to provide
certain evidence

to the Mexican authorities.

We have to demonstrate that
we have probable cause,

not only for the homicide,

but also that ties
Ricardo to it.

- Ricardo is actually
arrested in Mexico in January,

but the extradition process
takes a bit of time.

So he doesn't actually
arrive back in the States

in Southern California
until August.

When Ricardo sits down with
Santa Ana investigators,

he tells them that very
early in the morning,

Mario did arrive
at his mom's house.

But what Ricardo saw was they
were getting in this argument.

- He claims that Mario was
grabbing Rebeca's hair.

So he grabbed a golf club

and struck Mario multiple
times in the head.

And he pulls a pocket knife
out in order to defend himself.

Ricardo is able to reach down,

take the knife away from Mario,

and use it to stab him instead.

So he wants to make
sure that Mario's dead.

So he grabbed the wire,

and wrapped the wire
around his neck,

and strangled him.

- There was blood
all over the tiles,

and Rebeca tells Ricardo,
"You gotta clean this up."

So he grabs bleach,

and he's scrubbing all the
blood off of all the tiles.

- And then they
bring a trash can in,

and they they're able to
get him into the trash can.

And then they take the trash can

and put it inside the van,

with Ricardo driving Mario's van

and Rebeca in her own car.

They find a dumpster
and dump the body

into the dumpster.

- What are they gonna
do with Mario's van?

Well, Rebeca instructs Ricardo,

Let's drive it down to
Mission Viejo to this park

that she remembers seeing when
she had worked down there.

And so the two of them
drive the van down there,

they leave it, and then Rebeca
drives him back to Santa Ana.

- The gasoline leak could
have been mechanical,

that was already
part of the vehicle.

We were never able to
demonstrate one way

or the other what
exactly the gas leak was.

Everybody that commits
homicides makes mistakes.

That's why we end
up catching them.

They had enough sense
to put gloves on,

but then to leave the
glove in the vehicle.

So in their mind, they're
thinking fingerprints

and not really thinking DNA.

narrator: In separate trials,

prosecutors are faced
with a daunting task

of a achieving two individual
murder convictions.

- So it's not impossible,

but it is very challenging
for a prosecutor

to convince the jury
that this murder occurred

when they have no body.

- The biggest hurdle you
have in a no-body case is

you lost another crime
scene for DNA, for injuries,

for timing of injuries,
all kinds of things,

and we were deprived that.

It is complicated.

But as a prosecutor, in
the trial, in the moment,

it's all about the evidence.

Mario left with all
his jewelry to sell,

because Rebeca told him

she was gonna make
a big purchase.

And to me, that's evidence

that there was a
plan to rob him,

and probably a plan to kill him.

The Rebeca defense was
this Ricardo is her son.

He's young. He's strong.

So maybe he was, you know,
kind of out of control,

and that she didn't really
have as much involvement.

Ricardo's defense was
kind of the opposite,

that he's manipulated
by his mother,

who is more cunning, and
planning, and knows Mario,

and really is
probably the person

who did plan the whole thing.

- Blaming each other
for what they did

and going at each
other's throats legally

to save themselves.

So that tells you a lot

as to who these people
were at the time.

- Rebeca Nivarez is convicted
of homicide and robbery

and sentenced to
25 years to life.

And Ricardo Diaz-Nivarez
is convicted of homicide

and also sentenced
to 25 years to life.

- What I find interesting
about this case

were the family ties.

In the case of Claudia,

it was probably
very heart wrenching

and gut wrenching for
her to see her mother

and brother convicted
and sent to prison.

Yet she was the one who
played a very integral role

in their convictions.

Adriana's family
continues to suffer

because they don't know
exactly what happened to him,

where he ended up,

and I think that
leaves that open wound.

- When Ricardo got
sentenced, he looked back,

and he just laughed and said,

"I'm gonna take it to the grave,

and you guys will never
find it, find his body."

How evil can you be not
only to take someone's life,

but not even leave
his body behind

where we could have had
a decent funeral for him,

a decent goodbye?

My grandfather went missing

when my daughter
was seven years old.

I remember he brought
out one book one day

when we visit him, and
my daughter was like,

"Oh, I can't read
it. It's Spanish."

He said, "Well, this is why
I want you to learn this."

And a couple months after
is when he got murdered.

Currently, my daughter works at
a Hispanic elementary school.

She's studying to be a teacher.

She always tells me,
"This is because grandpa

encouraged me to
learn Spanish."

My grandfather would
be just super proud

to see how far our
family has come.