Purebread Murder

Up next, a young woman is murdered after years of domestic abuse.

He's beat her before, he shot at her.

But the ex-boyfriend isn't the only suspect.

People will report the crime just to steer suspicion away from them.

It's a crime where things aren't always what they seem.

There were hamburger buns thrown all over the bathroom floor.

Even as a youngster, Christina Sanjubain had dreams of working in the news business.

Christina, I just want to be a journalist.

She said, Mom, I cannot be a doctor for you.

Mom, I cannot be a lawyer for you.

But her plans were stalled by an unexpected pregnancy in her senior year in high school.

She'd made some bad choices with the people she associated with and the kinds of things she did for recreation, including a fair amount of of drug use, it appeared.

Christina dropped out of high school, had the baby, and moved in with Jacob Hadley, the father of her child.

Unfortunately, that didn't appear to work out either.

Jacob regularly knocked her around.

She was seen with bruises and was very open about it.

Somebody would ask her

where she got that bruise, and she'd say, oh, Jacob beat me.

No matter what, how he treat her, she just cannot be apart from Jacob.

I don't know why.

I ask her, can you leave him?

No, mom, I can't.

I love him very much.

In 1999, Jacob shot Christina in the face with a pellet gun and spent three days behind bars.

She actually had a diary.

where she described some of her struggles and her desire to start out fresh and to make a good life for her and her young son.

He criticizes me.

He puts me down and physically abuses me.

After three years, I'm just starting to realize that I was the only one in love.

Finally, Christina and the baby moved out into a duplex apartment a few miles away.

Four days after Christina moved, one of her friends stopped by to see how she was doing.

He rang the bell, but there was no answer.

The door was locked.

When he looked through a screened window, he saw Christina's two-year-old son alone and crying.

But he thought he heard the child say, Mommy's dead.

And that prompted him into action.

He removed the screen, climbed inside, and found Christina semi-clothed, face down, in a bathtub full of water.

He rushed outside and asked asked the next-door neighbor to call 911.

I'd like to report his death.

I'd like to report his death.

The guy said she was dead.

I don't know.

I don't know.

My neighbor.

Christina was pronounced dead at the scene.

The child possibly witnessed his own mother's murder, and that's horrifying to me.

Investigators found evidence that the initial attack took place in the kitchen.

The victim's sandals were found squarely in the middle of the kitchen.

It was almost as though she was struck with such force that it knocked her right out of her sandals.

Our crime scene investigators found a metal collar that could have belonged on a frying pan handle.

She was hit with such force that it knocked her teeth out.

Christina had been stabbed to death with a knife, but no knife was found at the scene.

At first, I got mad at God.

Why he let her die this way?

Why you take her away from me this way?

To investigators, it was clear the killer had tried to hide his tracks.

While cleaning up, however, he tracked the bloody footprints all over the bathroom floor, into the kitchen and back.

It was a curious thing why he was barefoot.

We just really weren't sure.

And there was something else extremely unusual in the bathroom.

There were hamburger buns thrown all over the bathroom floor.

It looked like a bag of hamburger buns had just been opened and tossed around.

But they couldn't find the wrapper anywhere in the apartment.

You have to wonder what goes through a person's mind that kills someone and then leaves a child behind to sit there in that bloody crime scene.

Christina's ex-boyfriend, Jacob, was the prime suspect.

Jacob certainly had motive.

They had separated.

They had a rocky past.

Everybody thought in my family thought that Jacob did it.

The crime scene showed signs that Christina Sanjovain knew her killer.

There was no forced entry and nothing was stolen.

Could have been about drugs, it could have been about rejection, it could have been about anything.

but it wasn't robbery.

At the autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence Christina had been sexually assaulted.

Her throat had been cut.

At autopsy, it revealed that her trachea had been totally severed.

When a knife is used on a victim, that's very much up close and personal.

There was no toxicology screening tests done on Christina.

And this was because Dr.

Ehlers could not get any blood.

An x-ray showed a metal pellet lodged in Christina's face, a stark reminder of the time her ex-boyfriend Jacob Hadley shot her with a pellet gun just 18 months earlier.

They've had a fight all the time

and who's going to kill her except Jacob.

The most dangerous time for a domestic abuse victim is shortly after she tries to make a clean break from her abuser and she had just done this in a big way.

She had moved away.

Investigators interrogated Christina's Christina's ex-boyfriend Jacob immediately after her murder.

He said that on the night of the murder, he was a half hour away.

Jacob produced two very credible witnesses to testify that he had been drinking with them.

As a matter of fact, they were members of the University of Iowa women's track team.

But the medical examiner estimated the time of death could have been anytime between 9 p.m.

and 3 a.m.

And not all of Jacob's time could be accounted for.

The evidence at the crime scene indicated the perpetrator was probably someone

Christina knew.

Other evidence suggested it was someone who lived close by.

For example, the killer wasn't wearing shoes.

When you have a barefoot print and blood, it's obviously someone that's close to the scene, whether it's someone that lives in the residence or someone close by.

People generally don't run around barefoot as a matter matter of course.

And inside the bathroom, investigators found a possible explanation for why the hamburger buns were there.

They found the clip to the hamburger buns on the floor in the bathroom, so it appeared that the hamburger buns had been opened in the bathroom.

But they never found the bag that the hamburger buns came in.

We surmise that the killer may have used the wrapper to wrap the knife in so that as he carried the knife out of the apartment, it wouldn't drip blood anywhere.

This was yet another clue that the killer lived nearby.

Not only did he have bare feet, but he was concerned about leaving a blood trail, possibly one leading straight to his door.

This pointed towards two men who hadn't previously been thought of as suspects.

The man who claimed he found Christina's body, 32-year-old Todd Hale,

and Christina's next-door neighbor, Carlos Robinson, who had called 911.

Both men knew one another since they both helped Christina move into her apartment three days earlier.

Investigators had been suspicious of Todd Hale's claim that he'd been able to enter Christina's apartment through a small window opening without disturbing the items on the entertainment center inside.

We thought for Todd to get in through that window, he would have to maybe have an acrobat's physique, which he did not.

Todd, they felt might have been a suspect because of the way he entered the apartment.

He wasn't invited in.

He opened the window, removed the screen, and snaked himself in through this small opening.

So they asked him to do it again while they watched.

We allowed him to demonstrate how he was able to climb through that window and around the entertainment center.

And he was able to do that even wearing some steel-toed work boots.

Hale got inside again without touching any of the items on the entertainment center.

It was a little bit amazing watching him do that.

It was like watching a burglar in action.

Next, police asked Christina's neighbor, Carlos Robinson, to provide a routine statement, and he willingly complied.

Investigators described him as being very helpful.

very cooperative.

When the police left the room, of course they keep their eye on him.

He got down and began praying.

And that doesn't happen very often, I don't think.

My very last words to her were, I love you.

And not a lot of parents ever get to say that, you know.

In 2010, Aubrey Sacco vanished while hiking in the Himalayas.

Now, After 15 years of searching, her parents share what they've uncovered in a three-episode special of Status Untraced.

Dads are supposed to find their daughters when they're in trouble.

Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Investigators had three suspects in the murder of Christina Sanjubane.

Her ex-boyfriend, Jacob Hadley, who had previous arrests for physical violence against Christina.

He's shot at her, he's beat her several times, that she has restraining orders against him.

The other two included the man who found Christina's body and Christina's next-door neighbor who called 911.

Sometimes people will report the crime just to steer suspicion away from them.

But investigators needed forensic evidence to compare to these suspects and were fortunate to find some footprints at the scene.

You can't see the prints really with the the naked eye unless you're really looking.

And I'm sure that the suspect never realized that he had left so many prints behind in his haste to collect the physical evidence that he thought might be damning.

These bare footprints, which contain ridge detail, can be identified belonging to a specific person just as a fingerprint would.

So Jacob Hadley, Todd Hale, and Carlos Robinson were asked to provide their prints.

We brought Jacob, Todd, and the neighbor down to the identification bureau and took footprints from all three of them.

Todd Hale's footprints didn't match.

Jacob Padley's footprints didn't match either.

Well, then there was Carlos, and

it struck me odds.

I inked Carlos' feet and asked him to step down from the chair onto the

the paper, and he was reluctant to do that.

Carlos walked down one side of the paper and then walked over the footprints he'd just made.

Something's just not right here.

It wasn't hard instructions to understand and follow.

It's almost like he was trying to obliterate his known footprints.

Finally, technicians got usable prints, and they were compared to the bloody footprints in Christina's bathroom.

This is our guy.

It's his footprint.

Carlos's palm print was also a perfect match to the bloody palm print on Christina's bathroom sink.

And Carlos' DNA matched the DNA from Christina's rape test kit.

When faced with this incriminating evidence, Carlos made a startling confession.

He now claimed he'd had a consensual sexual relationship with Christina in the couple of days he'd known her.

He also claimed he found Christina's body several hours before Todd Hale did, but said he got scared and ran home instead of calling police.

He insisted, however, he wasn't the killer.

His story for not calling 911 was that he was a black man and he was scared that he would be framed for the murder.

The medical examiner estimated Christina Sanjubane was murdered between 9 p.m.

and 3 a.m.

Robinson was alone alone with his children during this time.

Carlos's wife was gone on the night this murder occurred.

She was gone to visit a relative in a neighboring city.

But investigators needed proof that Carlos Robinson was the killer after all and not just a neighbor who found her body and hadn't reported the crime.

People often look for somebody that has a motive.

And what we were trying to prove to the jury is that a person who barely knew the victim for four days had killed her and that the ex-boyfriend who was abusive to her didn't.

Then, investigators discovered either another piece of evidence or a complication.

In looking at the crime scene evidence, Scientists noticed something in the hamburger buns.

One of them was misshaped.

We did use some light at oblique angles and some ultraviolet light.

This was also used when we took photographs of the bun.

The indentation strongly resembled a right toe, the ball of a foot, and bits of the second and third toes.

And it looked like there were ridge details in the soft bread that resembled prints.

If these were footprints that matched Carlos Robinson, prosecutors had an open and shut case.

Our suspect dumped the buns on the floor and used the plastic bag to carry out the knife.

The buns were fresh, and the barefoot person had also stepped in these hamburger buns.

But if they weren't Robinson's prints, then it raised the possibility of reasonable doubt or the possibility that Robinson had an accomplice.

So it was almost like we had to prove not just that the defendant committed this crime, but that nobody else did either.

Investigators assigned to Christina Sanjuvain's murder found an unusual piece of evidence at the crime scene.

They had what looked like a footprint in a hamburger bun next to Christina's body.

Investigators believed it was made by the killer as he fled the scene.

In order to verify their work, Iowa investigators took the bun and photographs to Gene Czarnicki, a certified print examiner at the DCI Crime Lab in Des Moines, Iowa.

Czarnicki not only confirmed this was a right foot in the soft bread, but found enough clear ridge detail to convince him that it was the footprint of Carlos Robinson.

I think if the bun was in a dry or stale condition, the print may have not been reproduced.

We were quite fortunate in that the bun appears to have been fresh when he stepped on it.

This proved that the only evidence at the crime scene was Carlos Robinson's.

Investigators believe Christina was a victim of her own trusting nature.

Carlos was her neighbor.

They'd already met, so when he knocked on her door, she let him in.

Carlos wasn't wearing any shoes since he lived next door.

Once inside, prosecutors believe he made a sexual advance, which Christina turned down.

So Carlos hit Christina with tremendous force, knocking out three of her teeth.

He then dragged her to the bathroom where he sexually assaulted her and killed her with a knife.

He filled the tub with water in an attempt to wash away evidence, but he grabbed the sink with his bloody hand as he got up, leaving behind a perfect palm print.

He needed to get rid of the murder weapon, so he went to the kitchen, tracking his bloody footprints.

He grabbed a bag of hamburger buns,

dumped them on the floor, then put the knife inside the bag so it wouldn't leave a blood trail when he left.

On his way out, he stepped on one of the buns, leaving the one piece of forensic evidence he couldn't refute.

Robinson murdered Christina with her child inside the house.

That little child was in that house for up to 24 hours, we estimate,

with his dead mother in the bathtub.

I am call him a monster and I never forgive him.

Even I die till the day I die, I'm not going to forgive him

ever.

Prosecutors believe Carlos was afraid his wife would end their marriage when she found out he had made a sexual advance toward Christina.

And that's why he decided to murder her.

Robinson was charged with first-degree murder.

Mr.

Robinson, I would advise you with respect to the charge.

You have a right to have an attorney and to have the attorney represent you at all stages of the proceeding.

Robinson was convicted of Christina's murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

There's certainly a feeling of the victim getting some justice, but at the end of the day, you still have a 20-year-old single mother that died for no reason other than someone else's violence.

And that's sad.

I believe that other people, parents have

children, got killed and murdered,

and they move on with their life.

Me, I don't know why.

I cannot.

I cannot go work outside.

It hurts me.

and it hits me all the time that I miss Christina so bad.