Ana Bell Juarez (King of Hearts, Texas)

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Speaker 1 Our card this week is Annabelle Juarez, the king of hearts from Texas. By the time detectives learned of Annabelle's disappearance, she'd already been gone for months.

Speaker 1 And for almost 30 years, detectives have been trying to fill in the gaps and make up for lost time. And now they're asking for your help.

Speaker 1 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Speaker 1 On April 10th, 1997, Margarita Gardner walked into the Odessa Police Department to file a missing persons report for her daughter, Annabel Juarez.

Speaker 1 She told detectives that she hadn't heard from her daughter since January. And when she called after that, she only got Annabelle's husband, Oscar, on the phone.

Speaker 1 And Oscar told her that he hadn't seen or heard from Annabelle since January 27th when she went to Ohinaga, Mexico. Here's Odessa police detective Lauren Gonzalez.

Speaker 3 She did immediately indicate in her report that she suspected Oscar. of doing something because

Speaker 3 she had disclosed that Annabelle had been staying with someone named Daniel Kobos at his house.

Speaker 3 And she gave all of his information, his address, and she had stated that in December of 1996, so one month before she went missing, that Oscar had told Margarita that he was going to kill Annabelle and Daniel Kobos.

Speaker 3 And she said this happened. He said this to her in person at her house.

Speaker 1 You're likely wondering why she's just now reporting Annabelle missing if Oscar threatened her back in December. But it's not as clear-cut as it may seem.

Speaker 1 When our reporter talked with Annabelle's sister, Jeanette, over the phone, she claimed that they had tried to report her missing sooner, but it was the police who wouldn't take the report until April 10th.

Speaker 1 Here's Jeanette recalling that.

Speaker 6 I called the police department in Odessa several times, and they would not even take the report or the information because they said that I lived out of state.

Speaker 6 So So at that point in time, then I contacted my mother. She called them

Speaker 6 and she tried to do the report. They would not take her report because she had to be missing at least 48 hours.

Speaker 1 I'm not clear on when this happened, but Jeanette said that officers wanted her mom to call all their family, friends, anyone who might know where Annabelle is before they take the report.

Speaker 1 There didn't seem to be any urgency, despite Jeanette and her mom knowing that Annabelle would never leave her two young children behind for months.

Speaker 6 It was extremely frustrating because my mother mostly had to do all of the legwork. She had to run around.
She went to Mexico, talked to family, she was on the phone.

Speaker 6 She was just trying to look everywhere for her and checking with everyone she could think of. And nobody had seen or heard anything from her.

Speaker 3 After the report was made by Margarita, a couple of officers came forward and said that Oscar Juarez

Speaker 3 had come to the police department kind of asking to make a missing persons report, but the context of their conversations with him was that she had left him and run off to Mexico.

Speaker 3 And so they were like, well, if she went of her own free will to Mexico, that's not, you know, if your wife left you, that's not a missing person, kind of was what they would tell him.

Speaker 3 One of the officers documented that he had actually come in and tried to report her missing that day that he said she left. And some of these officers were very familiar with Oscar because he was

Speaker 3 like a confidential narcotics informant. And so they had regular contact with him already.

Speaker 1 Knowing that's the information they were getting behind the scenes from him, you can see how it likely colored every interaction after when her family would try and call and relay some some kind of urgency.

Speaker 1 Police were assuming she'd come back, but she hadn't after all this time. And hearing about the threats Oscar had made now in April, detectives got to work.

Speaker 1 And they had a lot of lost time to make up for. They basically had to work backwards in order to move forward in Annabelle's case.

Speaker 3 A really big piece of evidence that I think does corroborate the timeframe are the phone records that we do have. That does show

Speaker 3 that the last time Annabelle talked to her family outside of her husband, Oscar, there are calls that are time stamped and dated January 25th when she talked to her sister in Florida, I think approximately around 4.30 p.m.

Speaker 3 And then she called her mother Margarita in Monahan's later that evening. And so we can kind of pinpoint that is when someone other than Oscar heard from her.

Speaker 1 Jeanette confirmed that the last time she talked to her sister was around that time. She remembered her sister telling her she wanted to leave Odessa and Oscar and take her kids with her.

Speaker 1 Jeanette even offered to let them come stay with her there in Florida, but Annabelle couldn't leave right then.

Speaker 1 She needed to wait a little bit till some money came in so Jeanette could help pay for the move. By the time Jeanette had the money, Annabelle was gone.

Speaker 1 And no one had the faintest idea where to even begin looking for her.

Speaker 3 As far as I know, there's no documented searches because there were no leads as to where to begin. We're in the middle of the desert here.
It's huge. It's a lot of brush, a lot of sand dunes.

Speaker 3 Witness canvassing was done later on in April and May.

Speaker 3 But so much time had passed that a lot of like generalized timeframes were given by neighbors. Oh, sometime sometime around Christmas, sometime right before the new year, things like that.

Speaker 3 Not real days, not real concrete timeframes, which is really just detrimental and devastating in a case like this.

Speaker 1 While there was nothing concrete, there were a few people that said they knew Annabelle was trying to leave Oscar.

Speaker 1 Detectives found it was pretty common knowledge that Annabelle was separated from him and sometime in December had moved her and her kids into her potential new boyfriend's place.

Speaker 1 That new boyfriend was a band named Daniel Kovos, and that was about a month before she went missing. When they finally did get to talk to Oscar, he even corroborated that.

Speaker 3 He does mention that she had been living with Danny Kovos, but that she had stayed there for approximately two weeks and that around that same time, she was very depressed.

Speaker 3 and she had been seeking mental health. She had sought mental health treatment.

Speaker 1 Jeanette told us she wasn't aware that her sister had ever seriously struggled with her mental health or sought professional treatment outside of just dealing with general anxiety from all the drama with Oscar.

Speaker 1 And there was plenty of drama that spanned years since the two of them had known one another since Annabelle was just a kid.

Speaker 3 He said they had been together for nine years.

Speaker 3 They met in Presidio. When they met and became neighbors, she was like maybe 12 years old, but they were just neighbors.

Speaker 1 Oscar told detectives that they met because Annabelle was selling drugs. That's how they'd gotten involved with one another.

Speaker 1 Though exactly when that was isn't entirely clear, it seems like maybe it was when she was a bit older.

Speaker 3 Maybe when she was 20, maybe around then they got together because she was 29 when she went missing. They did not get married until after she had diamond, their first child together.

Speaker 3 And by this time, Oscar already has older children with other people. He does have other kids.

Speaker 1 According to Oscar, despite the separation, he and Annabelle were trying to reconcile.

Speaker 1 He says they connected about getting back together on Saturday, January 25th, around the same time that she last spoke to her mom and sister.

Speaker 1 And then the next day, the 26th, Annabelle told him she was pregnant.

Speaker 3 He called it, quote, a tubular pregnancy. What he probably meant was an ectopic pregnancy.

Speaker 3 She tells him she needs to terminate the pregnancy. And so

Speaker 3 she says she was going to go see

Speaker 3 Dr. Piña Molino in Juarez, Mexico, and that she was going to leave the kids with him because he was a good father.
So she got on the phone and started trying to find prices for bus tickets.

Speaker 1 Oscar told detectives he gave Annabelle some money, asked how long she was going to be gone, and she just said about three or four weeks.

Speaker 1 He said she was planning to go to Juarez to see the doctor, and then she was going to go visit her grandmother in Ohinaga. And when she was ready, she would call him so he could pick her up.

Speaker 1 But it's obviously been far more than four weeks at this point. Now, if you read some of the early reporting on this case, news articles will claim that Oscar's story changed from Ohinaga to Juarez.

Speaker 1 But Detective Gonzalez claims Oscar maintained that Annabelle was going to Juarez first and then planned to go to Ohinaga after. And that was always the plan.

Speaker 1 But regardless, Oscar told them that the next day, so January 27th, Annabelle got up early and left.

Speaker 1 He told detectives that he gave Annabelle a hug and a kiss goodbye, but he didn't actually go out and help her carry her bags to the truck that was outside waiting for her.

Speaker 1 He just kind of peeked out from behind the curtain in their house and watched as Annabelle loaded her stuff in and then took off.

Speaker 3 He described the bags that she took.

Speaker 3 He said a brown suitcase and a blue and white diaper bag, and that she got into a white Chevy pickup truck, specifically a Z71 Chevrolet shortbed pickup truck, and that a woman was with her and what got in the driver's seat and Annabelle got into the passenger seat.

Speaker 3 He said that he did not know who this other woman was.

Speaker 1 Oscar said he never got a good look at the woman in the white pickup. He just told them that she looked to be of Hispanic descent.
And that's where Oscar's helpful information ended.

Speaker 1 He said that he stayed back with their kids and waited for a call that never came.

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Speaker 1 After talking to Oscar and digging more into the circumstances before Annabelle's disappearance, detectives learned that Annabelle was part of an active lawsuit.

Speaker 1 She and her sister were in the middle of a wrongful death suit against a nursing home for the death of their father in 1995. And here's what's interesting.

Speaker 1 It turns out that those attorneys had actually hired a private investigator, according to Jeanette.

Speaker 1 And she knows this because that PI that was hired just so happened to be Jeanette's ex-husband, a guy named John Parker.

Speaker 1 So naturally, when Annabelle came up missing, John started poking around, especially in those early months when police wouldn't take the report.

Speaker 1 Once he knew they were looking into her disappearance, though, he freely shared everything he had found.

Speaker 3 I do have all of the reports, and the private investigator actually spoke, I think, to Oscar before police detectives.

Speaker 3 So in his report, he talks about that Oscar had nothing but nice things to say about Daniel Kovos, that he was happy for them to go on and, you know, have a life together and things like that.

Speaker 1 John noted that sentiment as strange in his report because it was contrary to what Oscar had reportedly told Margarita.

Speaker 3 So someone's exaggerating or not being entirely truthful there. I mean, who's to say who it is?

Speaker 3 That was a big thing that he was, that the private investigator that was really kind of harping on there.

Speaker 1 The stories are made more drastically different when you learn that Margarita told John that the reason Oscar gave for wanting to kill Annabelle and Daniel Kovos wasn't just because she was living with him.

Speaker 1 Allegedly, it was because it was Daniel's child she'd been pregnant with, though there's no way to prove paternity with Annabelle missing.

Speaker 3 And Parker is also reporting that Margarita Gardner said that she had seen a shovel in Oscar's car, which is not something she had put in her original report, but it is something that Parker had told police.

Speaker 3 He expresses to detectives that he is suspicious of Oscar, that Oscar's generally very nervous when he talks to Parker.

Speaker 1 On May 13th, detectives finally did what they honestly probably should have done right after talking to Oscar. They went and spoke to Daniel Kovos.

Speaker 3 So Daniel Kovos was also from Presidio,

Speaker 3 and in approximately November 1996, they reconnected after he found out she was living in Odessa again. And she had told him that she was married but separating from her husband Oscar.

Speaker 3 This is almost six months after she disappears, so he's not able to give really concrete times, but he estimates that approximately a week before Christmas is when she moved into his house.

Speaker 3 So the kids were living there with her and him.

Speaker 3 And then shortly after moving in, he said that she went on a trip with her mother to Del Rio, Texas, which is another border town.

Speaker 3 And then she moved out of his house because she was going to seek treatment at a place called Glenwood Hospital. Glenwood Hospital isn't around anymore.

Speaker 3 So she must have not been there long because right before New Year's, she went back to Daniel Kovos and moved back in again.

Speaker 3 He reported that in the evening of New Year's Day, Oscar had called Daniel and threatened him and threatened to hurt his son.

Speaker 1 Daniel told detectives the reason he didn't report Annabelle missing was because they'd kind of broken things off. He'd asked her to move out because of her marijuana usage and mood swings.

Speaker 1 The last he knew was that she and her kids moved back into the house with Oscar.

Speaker 1 He'd actually been the one to give her a ride back home to Oscar, even though Annabelle at at times had been scared of him.

Speaker 1 He said that he knew Oscar had been physically violent with her in the past, though this is the only statement we have backing that up.

Speaker 1 Now, he couldn't remember the exact date that she moved out, but he said that it was sometime in January.

Speaker 1 Though he did see her at least one more time when she'd shown up at his work to tell him that she might be pregnant. Might be.

Speaker 1 She wouldn't know the test results for a few days, but she wanted to give him a heads up. He told detectives that that conversation wasn't actually bad.

Speaker 1 He'd told her that he was willing to figure something out if she was in fact pregnant with his kid. Now, once investigators were done talking to Daniel, they're totally done with him.

Speaker 1 They don't think he was suspicious and they actually didn't bring him in for any further questioning. They were much more interested in Oscar.

Speaker 1 But things kind of dead end when they go confront Oscar and he denies ever even threatening Daniel or Annabelle.

Speaker 1 So they were left to kind of try and find other people who knew Annabelle, who might have seen or or heard something in the time leading up to her disappearance.

Speaker 1 They ended up talking to a neighbor who claimed that sometime in December, though they didn't remember the specifics, Oscar told this neighbor that Annabelle was in Juarez at a behavioral health hospital.

Speaker 1 And this was around the time that Annabelle did go out of town for a hospital visit, at least according to Daniel. But Daniel had said that she'd gone to Del Rio in Texas.

Speaker 1 And that's like over 400 miles away from Juarez. So it's not like they're just nearby cities or getting confused.

Speaker 1 That same neighbor noticed that Oscar had started selling some of his and Annabelle's things in March. I mean, she'd only been gone for a few months by all accounts at that point.

Speaker 1 And Oscar had acted like she was coming back. So it was weird to see him getting rid of all of her stuff.

Speaker 1 One of Annabelle's best friends, Manuela Piña, offered more insight into weird activity going on at Annabelle's house. Not necessarily related to Oscar, though.

Speaker 3 Now, she made statements to the police that she had been at Annabelle's house and there would be men coming around looking for money, that they would knock on the door and she would say, oh, tell them that we're not home.

Speaker 3 And she would get the impression that they were after money.

Speaker 1 Manuela told detectives she didn't know who they were there for, but she assumed it was drug-related because she knew Annabelle used marijuana.

Speaker 1 Now, she had never actually seen her use the drug, but what she did see was Oscar get physically violent with Annabelle. She didn't say when this happened, just that she'd seen it.

Speaker 1 And she knew about Annabelle's pregnancy, though she also believed Annabelle was pregnant with Daniel Kovos' baby. But Manuela said that Annabelle was just trying to get a pregnancy test.

Speaker 1 She didn't even know if it was confirmed. And when she called the house to see if Annabelle needed a ride to go get a pregnancy test, it was Oscar who answered.

Speaker 1 He told her that Annabelle had just left for a couple of weeks. But then later, she said his story changed and he told her it would actually be six weeks and that she was in Oinaga.

Speaker 1 Now, back when investigators first confronted Oscar, he'd agreed to take a polygraph.

Speaker 1 But between scheduling and him being a no-show at least once, it didn't happen until like a month later on July 10th. And by that point, they had plenty of things to ask him about.

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Speaker 3 Looking at the polygraph examination report, it is absolutely meaningless to me. There is no narrative written about their conversation.
There is no list of questions asked.

Speaker 3 All it says is no deception indicated. I mean, he can say, I passed a polygraph all he wants.
I really don't care. It doesn't mean anything in the investigation.

Speaker 1 Back then, it must have meant something, or they didn't know where else to go, because once he passed his polygraph and detectives finished talking to neighbors and friends, they labeled Annabelle's case inactive.

Speaker 1 That was July 24th, 1997.

Speaker 1 In 2001, investigators made sure that her case got entered into the FBI's Criminal Justice Information services.

Speaker 1 That way, if she came through the system in another state, she'd pop up as a missing person in Texas.

Speaker 1 They also tried to get enough DNA samples from her family into CODIS just in case an unidentified body was ever found somewhere that would match to her. But they were met with some obstacles there.

Speaker 3 So in 2001, a DNA sample was collected from Annabelle's daughter, Diamond, and entered into COTIS to begin the familial DNA CODIS search.

Speaker 3 It did indicate that additional family DNA profiles were recommended to make a stronger genealogical profile.

Speaker 3 So a detective contacted Annabelle's sister, but she stated she preferred investigators to get a sample from Annabelle's son first,

Speaker 3 although Jeanette refutes that and says that nobody ever asked her for a sample. So the detective contacts Oscar and tells him they need a DNA sample from Treasurer.

Speaker 3 And he says, sorry, he's leaving for the military.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 was that. That was kind of the last thing.

Speaker 1 Annabelle's case went cold until Detective Gonzalez herself got involved and started working the case in February 2022.

Speaker 3 Annabelle's file was in a desk drawer in one of the many pieces of furniture in here. Just this little like flipbook thing.
It was like, it was very small.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, okay, yeah, like, what's this one? And so I'm like realizing she's, oh, okay, this is a missing person. She's still missing.

Speaker 3 And that, I think that was the first case where I started to get my feet wet too with familial DNA and stuff.

Speaker 1 After splitting her time between leading new and cold cases, Detective Gonzalez finally requested to focus all her time solely on the cold ones.

Speaker 1 And since January of this year, she has been able to devote more time to Annabelle's case.

Speaker 3 When I went through the file, there was those huge gaps in time where nothing like, this is not being revisited. And I do think that is part that bothered me is like, we put it in a drawer.

Speaker 3 We forgot about it. No one is doing anything.

Speaker 3 And yeah, I mean, look at this picture.

Speaker 3 Look at that.

Speaker 3 That was like within the year before she went missing. Like, and her kids, I mean, on.

Speaker 1 When it came to looking at what evidence they did have, there wasn't much.

Speaker 1 The most crucial piece that Detective Gonzalez found were those phone records, the ones confirming the last time Annabelle talked to her mom and sister.

Speaker 1 But thankfully, there were also those files from P.I. John, who went the extra mile.

Speaker 3 John Parker also physically searched the caller ID on the physical home phone and had found that that morning at 6.25 a.m.,

Speaker 3 there was a call to a number.

Speaker 1 A number attached to a name that wasn't associated with Annabelle or her family and friends. But the PI didn't leave it at that.

Speaker 1 Detective Gonzalez learned that he'd called the number and the person on the other end said they didn't know Annabelle or Oscar.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, it was hard to tell if Annabelle was calling that number or being called by that number, but this unknown call was made the morning that Annabelle went missing on January 27th.

Speaker 1 So it seems important.

Speaker 1 The other thing Detective Gonzalez noted in Annabelle's small file was that back in 2010, there was some kind of notice given to their department about a Jane Doe that had been found.

Speaker 3 He was notified that an unidentified body of a pregnant woman had been located on South Padre Island in 1998.

Speaker 3 So that would have been a year after Annabelle was reported missing. And, you know, her being pregnant, it was speculated, maybe, you know, is this going to be possibly Annabelle?

Speaker 1 But as Detective Gonzalez was looking at that file now, it was unclear if detectives ever got DNA from their Jane Doe to compare with Annabelle's DNA in CODIS.

Speaker 3 I contacted the Texas DPS missing persons clearinghouse, and they did verify to me that that person, those remains they found, were positively identified in 2012 as someone other than Annabelle.

Speaker 1 Right before recording this episode, Detective Gonzalez let us know that after reaching back out to the Texas DPS missing persons clearinghouse, she found that the South Padre Island Jane Doe was identified as Tammy L.

Speaker 1 Glaze from Springfield, Missouri. So not Annabelle.
Next, Detective Gonzalez wanted to make sure that all the DNA bases were covered in Annabelle's case.

Speaker 1 And that meant getting more familial DNA samples. She sent out a Texas Ranger to collect DNA from Jeanette and Margarita, and those were entered into CODIS.

Speaker 1 But again, there were no hits, meaning that if Annabelle's remains have been found, her DNA hasn't been entered into CODIS.

Speaker 1 In addition to her DNA search, Detective Gonzalez was also tracking down more information from the people originally interviewed, if they were still around.

Speaker 1 Her goal was to see if they corroborated their original statements or had something different to share.

Speaker 3 Margarita did mention that Oscar had told Margarita that Annabelle was pregnant, but Annabelle had never told her that herself. She also stated

Speaker 3 that Margarita had gone,

Speaker 3 she had gone to Juarez herself to talk to Dr. Jesus Piña is how she remembered his name.
And

Speaker 3 that she remembered him being nervous and made all the nurses leave before he would talk to her about Annabelle. And it was pretty vague.
I didn't have much context for that.

Speaker 3 I didn't have, you know, seen her when,

Speaker 3 you know, while during that time she was disappeared, Margarita couldn't really provide a lot of those really burning details that I wanted about Dr. Pena.

Speaker 1 Detective Gonzalez also said that there were no details that Annabelle even went to a clinic and got a positive pregnancy test, meaning that the story Oscar had doesn't totally ring true.

Speaker 1 It's unlikely she would have known if her pregnancy was a topic when she disappeared. Now, everything around her pregnancy is just hearsay, primarily from Oscar and Daniel.

Speaker 3 As far as what I have, law enforcement never got in contact with Dr. Pimia.
So that is a big piece of the puzzle that I do want out there.

Speaker 3 I have not been able to find any records for it, but maybe someone in Mexico or El Paso or somewhere near there knows something. Maybe that was their doctor.
Maybe he's still alive.

Speaker 3 And all the family talks about him as being Dr. Piña, which is P-I-N-A.
P-E-N-A is more common here, but they are adamant as P-I-N-A. And that Jesus was his first name.

Speaker 3 So Molina might be a second last name, IB middle name. I'm not sure.
But

Speaker 3 the address they gave was the intersection of Carrera Terra and Poor

Speaker 3 in Juarez-Chihua, Mexico. Now, when you look this up on Google Maps, there is one street in Juarez called Porvenir.

Speaker 1 But this street is more of an alleyway, and it's a pretty residential area now. As of today, Detective Gonzalez hasn't been able to track down this doctor.

Speaker 1 She doesn't know if he's alive or if he's even real, but that doesn't mean she's not out there looking for him.

Speaker 3 Yes, I'm looking for a Dr. Jesus Piña or Dr.
Jesus Molina Piña or Piña Molina, who worked near Porvenier Street in Juarez in the 1990s and he was practicing with a Dr. Carlos Collin.

Speaker 3 And the sign on the location just said Servicios Médicos.

Speaker 1 So essentially, detectives believed that Dr. Piña could have been a family doctor and someone who Annabel went to.

Speaker 1 There's just no information at all verifying that Annabelle was treated or seen by him in the late January timeframe.

Speaker 1 Detective Gonzalez also went back and spoke with John Parker, the PI who'd initially said that he'd talked to Dr. Piña.

Speaker 1 And listen, there's like an article that claims that he took several trips to Mexico looking for Annabelle and that he did talk to the doctor.

Speaker 1 But now when Detective Gonzalez spoke with him, he said that he didn't recall ever going to Mexico at all to investigate.

Speaker 1 And when our reporter Madison asked Jeanette Jeanette if her ex-husband had gone to Mexico, again, her ex-husband being John Parker, the PI, but she said no, that it had always just been her mom, Margarita, that had gone looking for Annabelle in Mexico.

Speaker 1 And Margarita allegedly did speak to Dr. Piña.
Here's Jeanette again.

Speaker 6 Well, she said she did find him, and he told her that he never saw her, that he hadn't seen her in years.

Speaker 6 I remember my mom hinting that she did think that he was nervous, but I

Speaker 1 When Detective Gonzalez talked to Jeanette, she was eager to pass on any files she'd gotten from John. Her files were easier to go through because they'd all been typed out and saved in a PDF.

Speaker 1 The report he'd given police was mostly just handwritten notes. Jeanette also pointed Detective Gonzalez to someone who was never interviewed by or spoke to police.

Speaker 1 a woman named Mary Lou Manriquez Kovos. She was one of Annabelle's good friends, so close that Mary Lou knew her friend was living with her husband's cousin, Danny, or Daniel Kovos.

Speaker 1 Mary Lou wasn't aware Annabelle was pregnant, but she knew about her relationship with Daniel.

Speaker 3 She said that right after Christmas, she was looking for Annabelle because she had gotten some Christmas gifts for Annabelle's kids because they were her godchildren. And so she...

Speaker 3 uh ended up finding out that she was at danny kovos' house so she saw her over there gave the kids their gifts Everything seemed fine.

Speaker 3 Nothing stood out as being, you know, wrong or anything like that.

Speaker 1 And then, for the first time since his initial interview, Detective Gonzalez talked with Daniel Kovos again, just earlier this year.

Speaker 3 His statements were pretty different from what he had told police back then, but not really in a suspicious way. He didn't have a lot of memories from back then.
Their relationship was brief.

Speaker 3 It was almost 30 years ago. He remembered that she was a wonderful mother and cared very much for her kids and that that is a thing that stuck out to him.
He didn't believe she would leave them.

Speaker 3 He doesn't even remember Oscar verbally threatening him over the phone, but he does remember that Annabelle was scared of Oscar, worried about what he was going to do if she continued to live with Danny.

Speaker 3 And that's why she moved out. Now, a big difference in his statement, too, is this time he had said that he remembers Annabelle saying, I'm going to go to Mexico to have an abortion.

Speaker 3 He never reported that before. That's how he remembered the conversation going, that they didn't talk about if it was his or not, just that she told him she was going to go have an abortion in Mexico.

Speaker 3 because Oscar wanted her to get rid of the baby.

Speaker 1 Detective Gonzalez talked to Oscar recently too. In the case file, it looked like Oscar hadn't been talked to since 2011 when he was asked about Treasure's DNA.

Speaker 1 He and Gonzalez spoke for several hours and he really didn't hold back much. His story was pretty much the same as what he said in his statements to detectives back in 1997.

Speaker 1 Back then, he did say that Annabelle seemed high more often than not, but Now he said that wasn't actually true. She smoked a little pot occasionally, but it wasn't serious and she was a good mom.

Speaker 1 And then he went on to talk about his experience as a law enformant.

Speaker 3 He did mention a man

Speaker 3 that he said was

Speaker 3 a drug dealer in the West Texas area that Annabelle was friends with. And he gave a name, but he said that he was even old during that time and there's no way he's alive today.

Speaker 3 No one else really brought this person up to me. And so it's really not kind of any sort of actionable lead.

Speaker 1 Despite Oscar's cool demeanor, Detective Gonzalez still looked into his criminal record. An article published on KBAT claims that he was arrested in May 1992 for family violence against Annabelle.

Speaker 1 This happened in San Angelo, where they were living before.

Speaker 3 The assault had even been witnessed by a neighbor. Oscar fled the scene and was later found and was arrested for an assault, a class A misdemeanor, to which he pled no contest to.

Speaker 3 The report showed that there weren't any photographs or anything like that, but it did show that

Speaker 3 she reported he had hit her over the head with a whiskey bottle and

Speaker 3 that she had like a two-inch cut on her head from that. So that's what the police documented there in San Angelo about that.

Speaker 1 When she brought up this charge to him, he said that it wasn't anything serious. He threw a whiskey bottle, it hit a wall, and the shards flew off and then hit Annabelle.

Speaker 1 But he said she wasn't injured, though in the report, there are literal witnesses that confirmed she was.

Speaker 1 By the end of their conversation, Oscar told Detective Gonzalez that he just knew Annabelle left in a white pickup truck and nothing else.

Speaker 1 We thought it would only be fair to go straight to the source to try and get answers to all the questions we were left with. So we paid Oscar a visit ourselves.

Speaker 1 Oscar!

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Speaker 1 It was unclear if Oscar was home when we stopped by. But I mean, all his windows were open, the TV was clearly on, the dogs were going wild.

Speaker 1 But Oscar never came to the door. So our reporter left a note telling him that we were reporting on his missing wife's case and asked that he please call us back.

Speaker 1 But as of the airing of this episode, we have yet to hear from him.

Speaker 1 Now, one other thing Detective Gonzalez did is that she went back and looked into that lawsuit that Annabelle and her sister were going through at the time of her disappearance.

Speaker 1 Now, that lawsuit eventually settled, but instead of Annabelle's kids getting the money awarded to her, Oscar actually got it because they were in his custody.

Speaker 6 That money had been set aside when the lawsuit was over. The money was set aside for the kids when they turned 18.

Speaker 6 Or he could have access to it after seven years if she didn't show up. It's my understanding that he took the money out.
He never let us know anything. He just went and took the money out.

Speaker 6 According to his daughter, he squandered it and never had anything to show for it, never did anything for the children.

Speaker 1 But even on this point, when they talked to Oscar, it didn't seem like he was hiding anything.

Speaker 1 He told Detective Gonzalez that he had Annabelle declared dead and claimed the money, even told her exactly how he'd spent it.

Speaker 3 He said that he purchased a property that

Speaker 3 he moved into with the children. Now, this is not the property he lives on now.
So I don't know whatever became of that. So I don't have like records of this.

Speaker 3 I don't have a a death certificate for Annabelle. I don't know how she was declared dead, but this was something that was confirmed by Oscar when I interviewed him.

Speaker 1 Annabelle's family didn't have her death certificate either, and they weren't happy that she'd been declared dead because to them, there was just no proof.

Speaker 1 Since there's a known record of domestic violence, Oscar can't be ruled out as a suspect. But if there is evidence that can help rule him out, Detective Gonzalez wants to know.

Speaker 1 And so does Annabelle's family.

Speaker 6 It's horrible. I mean, how is it supposed to be? You know, you never have closure.
And you see your loved ones suffering too because they haven't had closure.

Speaker 6 It's just not an easy thing to go through.

Speaker 6 And you just hope and pray that, you know, God will send you a sign or finally reveal. what happened so that you can move on, you know, but

Speaker 6 without that, you just take it to by day and hope that one day she'll show up.

Speaker 1 The hardest part of this investigation for Detective Gonzalez is the jurisdiction restrictions that she faces with part of this case allegedly happening in Mexico.

Speaker 1 She doesn't have access to records in Mexico, so tracking people down and getting them to talk to her in a different country is extremely difficult and she's relying heavily on cooperation.

Speaker 1 And that's where you, our listeners, come in. If you or someone you know has information on Annabelle's disappearance, you can call Odessa Crime Stoppers at 432-333 TIPS.

Speaker 1 Remember that all calls that go through Crime Stoppers are anonymous, whether you want them to be or not.

Speaker 1 So if you want to talk directly to Detective Gonzalez, if you want them to know who's calling in the TIP, we're going to have the information for the department in the show notes.

Speaker 1 Detective Gonzalez isn't going to stop until she helps this family get closure. And for her, closure means one thing.

Speaker 3 To find Annabelle, no matter where she is or what state she's in. I mean, if she is alive somewhere, I would want her to hear this and let her know that her family loves her and they miss her.

Speaker 3 And they've always wondered what had happened to her. And they never stopped looking for her.

Speaker 3 And, you know, if she's not on this earth anymore, her family deserves to know and they deserve to lay her to rest.

Speaker 3 Sometimes it's not even knowing what happened to someone, but finding them is a huge piece of the healing process. And I think that would be good.

Speaker 3 I mean, my wildest dreams though, that I would want for this case is if someone did something to Annabelle, they deserve to to pay for that.

Speaker 3 We are still going to keep looking, even in places we've already looked and talking to people we've already talked to. We're going to be coming back.
We'll talk to you again.

Speaker 3 We will keep following up, even if those leads don't come in like we wish they do. We haven't forgotten this is a part of our history here.

Speaker 3 Even if another 30 years pass, we will still be looking out for her and wanting to find her.

Speaker 1 The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

Speaker 1 So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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