[Gavin] We think that this is a robbery,
but there's also what appears to be rage.
- He shot nine times. - [gunshots firing]
This seems more personal.
He was well revered within the Hispanic community.
He was someone that people looked up to.
She's sending the victim a text message
after she knows that he's dead.
We see a vehicle that matches
the description from our tipster.
We're on to something here.
[Kyle] He was upset with Rafael because
he found out that he was hitting on his wife.
Jealousy as a motive for murder, drives people into a blind rage
that can only be satisfied through murder.
This is the only number that we didn't have identified.
This is the person that called Rafael
who called him to another place,
which ended up being the place that he was murdered.
[Tish] Every day in North America,
dozens of people are murdered.
The key to solving the toughest of these homicides
lies in the final 24 hours of the victim's life.
To crack the case,
detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline.
The minutes and hours containing evidence
that can help unlock the mystery...
- [woman screaming] - and catch the killer.
Tulsa, Oklahoma,
once dubbed the oil capital of the world,
now a bustling and vibrant
multicultural city in America's south.
Tulsa is not a really large metropolis
like some of the major cities in America,
but it is a pretty large city, especially for Oklahoma.
As far as demographics of Tulsa,
the Hispanic population is about 15 percent.
The area around 21st Garnett, the Santa Cecilia Plaza
is a pretty big hub for the Hispanic community.
It is the heart of the community
because everything that they need and want is in that area.
[Tish] At first light, on a warm spring morning,
a 911 call is made
to the Rogers County Sheriff's Office.
On the morning of May 1st, 2015,
a dump truck driver who was actually
driving across the river bridge
and looked down and noticed a silver car.
That truck driver called Rogers County 911.
[siren wailing]
A deputy arrived on scene
and the trooper began operations
to recover the vehicle from the river.
As the vehicle was being pulled up the embankment,
the trunk pops open
and when it gets to the top, the deputy is able to see
that there is a body in the trunk.
[Tish] Homicide detectives Gavin Catrell
and Kyle Baker of Rogers County Sheriff's Office
are called to the scene.
When I received the call,
I was driving into work that morning
and I proceeded to the location
of where the body was found.
The Oklahoma State Highway Patrol trooper
and the Rogers County sheriff's deputy directed me to the trunk
where I can see that there is a Hispanic male,
approximately mid-40s, that is in the back of the trunk.
The body appeared to have multiple gunshots to his torso.
It appeared that the victim was robbed
and then murdered or vice versa.
And we know that because
his pockets were turned inside out,
somebody rifled through his pockets.
A normal person wouldn't leave their pocket turned inside out.
[Tish] As investigators survey the crime scene,
a narrative of the crime starts to come into focus.
As we do some further investigation,
we can see on the ground
that there are multiple tire tracks.
So we know that not only did we have multiple people there,
but we also had another vehicle.
There were nine millimeter shell casings located there.
There were other calibers that we identified,
but the bullet entry points to the body
appear to be consistent with a .380 or a nine millimeter.
We also find several beer cans
in the immediate vicinity
of where we found the tire tracks.
We also discovered some blood on the ground,
which led us to be fairly certain
that he was actually killed at that scene.
So that gave us a little bit more confidence
that we're going to get some sort of physical evidence from our killers.
My initial thought to this crime was a true whodunnit.
We don't have any leads at this time.
We don't have any witnesses
that say they saw somebody
kill this person or saw somebody
push this vehicle off into the river.
[Tish] For the investigation to move forward,
detectives will first need to identify the victim.
The vehicle has a name of "El Corre Caminos",
which translates to Road Runner.
And we quickly figured out that he is a taxi cab driver.
During the search of the vehicle,
we located a couple of different cell phones in the cab.
One of them was the victim's cell phone.
As we're conducting our investigation on the scene,
someone pulls up and they're pretty hysterical,
they're, you know, crying, they're upset.
We discovered that that individual's name is Oscar
and he was actually the victim's brother.
While speaking to Oscar. He told me that his brother's name is Rafael
and that he was a local taxi cab driver.
[Tish] The victim is 38-year-old Rafael Hernandez,
originally from Guanajuato, Mexico,
who has been living in Tulsa for 20 years.
Oscar gives us a lot of information about Rafael.
Rafael pretty much
specifically gave Hispanic individuals rides to court,
any appointments that they needed.
Rafael spoke Spanish and English,
so he could provide both translation services and the ride there.
According to Oscar, he was well revered within the Hispanic community.
He was someone that people looked up to
and people really required, you know,
to get through their daily lives.
Someone that would drop whatever he's doing to try to help somebody.
[Tish] To find out who killed Rafael Hernandez,
investigators will need to piece together his final 24 hours.
Oscar said Rafael didn't really have a lot of enemies,
that he did not know anybody that wanted to harm him.
He told us that Rafael was a business owner and dealt a lot in cash.
That quite frequently
Rafael would carry around $2,000 on his person daily,
and that was no secret to, to anyone, you know, in the community.
[horn honking]
Driving a taxi or operating a ride share service,
these are inherently dangerous occupations.
You're letting strangers into your vehicle
and you're in a position of great vulnerability.
The difference with a traditional taxi cab is,
of course, fares being paid by cash,
which then also makes you a susceptible target for robbery.
[tapping sound]
As we're looking at this...
we think that, you know, this is a robbery,
but there's also what appears to be rage
and overkill in killing him. He's shot nine times.
This is something that seems more personal,
like the victim knows the killer.
Oscar tells us that he had talked to his brother on the phone
at approximately 11:30 on April 30th.
Rafael tells Oscar that he's picking up a client,
an individual by the name of Ernesto at 9:00 p.m.
and is going to be driving him to Houston.
He doesn't expect that he'll be back until May 1st
at approximately 10:00-10:30.
[Tish] Investigators now have their first person of interest
in the brutal murder of Rafael Hernandez: Ernesto Lores.
The crime occurred in Rogers County,
but the people we are investigating
and need to speak with lived in Tulsa County.
We collaborated with them,
digging up information on the people
that we knew we're looking into.
We tracked down Ernesto Lores
and I interviewed him. He was very cooperative.
He seemed to be open to what our questioning was,
that he didn't have anything to do with this
and that he was telling us the truth.
Ernesto told me that he was supposed to meet
with Rafael at 9 p.m. at the gas station
and they were going to make the trip to Texas.
[car engine working]
Ernesto then sends a text to Rafael at 9:00 p.m.
when he arrives at the gas station.
So at 9:22 p.m., Rafael calls Ernesto
and indicates to him that he is going to be late.
He got a phone call from an individual that he knows
and that he has to help him,
that he was having some car trouble on the highway
and then that he would be back to get Ernesto and that they would leave.
Ernesto told me that he attempted to call Rafael
multiple times at 10 p.m. and didn't get any answer.
Ernesto then tells us he went ahead and drove to Texas himself.
We began digging into Ernesto's phone records
to see if he's telling us the truth and reviewing those records,
we did see that he did, in fact, drive to Texas like he said.
Based on those call detail records,
we can be fairly certain
that Rafael was not killed by Ernesto.
[Tish] But the information Ernesto provides
allows detectives to start building a timeline for Rafael's murder.
We know that Ernesto
spoke with Rafael at 9:22 p.m. on April 30th,
and then at 10:24 p.m. on April 30th,
Ernesto was no longer able to get a hold of Rafael.
So we're able to presume at this point
that Rafael is not answering his phone because he's already dead.
So we use those times of 9:22 to roughly 10:24
to establish that he was killed in that window of time.
We needed to figure out who this mystery person was who called Rafael,
saying that they had a broken down vehicle
and that they needed help translating.
This is the person that called Rafael to pull him to another place
which ended up being the place that he was murdered.
[gunshot fires]
[Tish] In the murder of well-loved local taxi driver Rafael Hernandez...
investigators are working the theory
that they're dealing with a robbery gone wrong.
Looking for leads,
investigators reach out to the media.
We received information off our tip line that
some passerby's had seen a black truck,
a black SUV and a silver car
on the side of the road
on the Carney River Bridge between 9:30 and 10:00.
So this was a good lead for us in what kind of vehicles were there.
So as we're thinking about possible theories
on what had happened at the scene,
we know that there's at least two people.
There's two cars involved and there's multiple sets of footprints.
[Tish] With this new evidence that they're likely looking for two killers,
detectives are hoping Rafael's brother, Oscar Hernandez,
can shed more light on who might have wanted Rafael dead.
Oscar tells us that Rafael is kind of a ladies man.
He's not married,
but he's got a girl that he's kind of trying to pursue romantically.
The individual's name is Laura Contreras,
and she is very friendly with Rafael,
but she lives with a man who she has a child with.
They're kind of common law married.
So this was very interesting to figure out
that she was in a relationship with Rafael
and with a different person.
It starts to build into this theory
that there is a revenge motive to this death,
that Rafael was possibly killed because of a relationship
he was pursuing with a married woman.
[car engine working]
[Tish] Looking for answers,
investigators bring Laura Contreras
into the station for questioning.
During the interview, Laura was very guarded,
trying to be as vague as possible with us.
We knew that she was hiding something from us.
We just didn't know what it was.
So while we're interviewing Laura,
she tells us that she is friendly with Rafael and they talk frequently
and that Rafael will come up and see her
at her place of employment and bring her flowers and things like that.
Laura told us that her lover, Pablo,
knew about Rafael, but he was okay with it
because it wasn't something serious.
We realize it does not match up
for what Oscar had told us previously.
Somebody wasn't telling us the truth.
Laura tells us that she had actually seen
Rafael multiple times on April 30th.
But the last time she says
Rafael had actually came into her work
at 11 p.m. on April 30th.
That didn't match up with the information that we had.
We had called detail records indicating
that Rafael was already dead at that point.
It just increased the suspicion we had for her
from that entire interview.
She indicates to us that she left a little after 11 p.m.
and that she went straight home.
Pablo and the daughter already asleep.
So, Laura tells us that at approximately 7:00 a.m.
on May 1st
that she saw on Facebook that Rafael had been murdered.
Based on the fact that, you know, she's given us
times that aren't matching up with what we know to be true,
we think that Laura could absolutely be involved.
And because of that, we have to dig deeper into her
to determine if she is or is not involved.
[Tish] As detectives work to verify Laura's alibi,
Rafael's cell phone records come in.
In order for cell phones to work,
they have to make a connection,
which is commonly called a handshake with a tower.
And as you're traveling down the highway, as, as you're moving,
your cell phone constantly updates and pings to the closest tower.
We received Rafael's phone records
and we were able to corroborate Ernesto's story that at 9:22,
when Rafael texted, that he was actually traveling northbound on 169,
headed towards the area where he was ultimately killed.
We know Rafael's location by triangulating
the signal of his cell phone
as it's moving down the highway.
So as we're examining these call detail records...
[car engine working]
We find one number that kind of stands out to us.
This number made the phone call to Rafael's phone
approximately 9:15 p.m.,
before Rafael tells Ernesto
that he is diverting to go help someone.
We found out that it was a burner phone.
This number is very suspicious
because people who don't want to be found
or don't want us knowing who they are,
will use a burner phone to conceal their identity.
This is the only number that we didn't have identified
as to who was behind that number.
It was crucial for us to determine who was using that phone.
At 9:48 p.m., Rafael called this mystery number,
and it was the last time Rafael had communicated with anybody.
We know that Ernesto tried to call Rafael at 10:24 p.m...
- [gunshot firing] - and Rafael doesn't answer.
But now we also know that Rafael
has called this burner phone at 9:48.
So the window gets narrower and narrower
with every piece of information we get.
[gunshot firing]
[Tish] Having narrowed down Rafael's window of death
to between 9:48 p.m. and 10:24 p.m.,
investigators dig into his cell phone records looking for new leads.
While we're examining call detail records,
we learn that Laura has actually called
or communicated with Rafael's phone at 8:39 a.m. on May 1st,
which struck us again as odd and very suspicious,
because Laura has indicated to us
that she was aware of Rafael's death at 7:00 a.m. on May 1st.
We also knew Laura was lying, unquestionably,
because she says she saw him at 11 p.m. on April 30th.
We know that he was on the highway at 9:30.
[car engine working]
Her lies exposed
because the phone records show that the phone was traveling at the time
when she claims that she was meeting him.
It certainly gives the investigators
cause to consider why she's lying and who she's protecting.
We already began to think that Laura was a potential suspect
because of her deceitfulness.
And now we're wondering if she really was involved
because she's sending the victim a text message after she knows that he's dead.
[bell ringing]
[Tish] In the brutal shooting of local taxi driver
and businessman Rafael Hernandez...
detectives are zeroing in on his girlfriend, Laura Contreras.
During the course the interview,
Laura actually gives us the wrong address.
So it was suspicious to us that she would provide us
with an address that wasn't accurate.
Through multiple different sources,
we were able to locate her residence.
We decide to go over and we want to put eyes on her.
While we're there, we see a vehicle that matches the description
of one of the vehicles that we got from our tipster.
It was a black pickup truck.
We also noticed a black SUV,
and that's when we made the conclusion that the trucks and this SUV
were more than likely the ones that the tipster saw at the scene of the crime.
We're on to something here,
and we need to dig a lot deeper into Laura
and the people that live at her house.
Then we observed Laura getting into her black SUV and she leaves her residence.
We contacted Tulsa police and they made a traffic stop on her.
She ended up having some warrants
and she was subsequently arrested on those.
[siren wailing]
That allowed us to be able to get her into custody
and really put some pressure on her,
because at this point we really feel like she's involved.
[Tish] Back at Laura's residence,
Detectives Catrell and Baker observed two males exit the house
and approach the black pickup truck.
They're identified as Pablo Lopez, Laura's common law partner,
and Roberto Rincon, a friend who was living with them
and the owner of the truck.
The truck that we locate there,
we end up kind of walking around looking at it
and it has a paper tag on it
which indicates that it's been purchased within the last month.
We see blood on the tag.
It's a bloody fingerprint and it shocks us.
We talked to Roberto about the vehicle he was driving
and why there was blood on the paper tag.
Roberto said he didn't know anything about the blood
and that he had just purchased the vehicle on May 2nd.
So while searching the truck,
we did locate two cellular devices.
Roberto told us that the one in the glove box was not his
and that he had found it the day before
and was going to hold on to it
until the person who lost it was going to call.
He's got this other phone that he's keeping around
that potentially could be a burner phone.
We asked, "Are there any firearms inside the house?"
Pablo told us that he did own a firearm
and that was a .380 and it was inside the house.
A .380 pistol is extremely similar in size
as far as projectile goes to a nine millimeter.
That interests us because the holes that are in Rafael's body
could, could very well have come from a .380.
[Kyle] It all started to add up that there's blood at the scene.
We have a cell phone that no one wants to claim ownership of,
but the vehicles match the same descriptions
of the people who saw them at the homicide scene.
We're excited at this point. We think that we've solved the case.
[Tish] Knowing that they are looking for two killers
and with the evidence stacking up against Roberto and Pablo,
investigators haul them into the station for questioning.
The question gets brought up about the relationship
between Laura and Rafael.
Pablo is not really concerned with the idea of a relationship.
He describes them as just being friends.
I do not believe that Pablo is not jealous.
I believe that there has to be some jealousy
with his lover talking to another man all the time.
Jealousy is among the top motives for murder.
Especially in cases where males perceive
that they're in part of a romantic love triangle.
They want to get back at the person
that they're thinking is involved with their partner.
It drives people into a blind rage, if you will,
and they ultimately become blinded by this impulse,
that can only be satisfied through murder.
[Tish] Detectives dig into Pablo's timeline
for the night of Rafael's murder.
The night of April 30th, Pablo was telling us
he was helping get the kids to sleep.
He wasn't sure where Roberto was and hadn't seen him.
Pablo tells investigators that when Laura got home,
he was already asleep.
[Tish] Then detectives shift from Pablo to Roberto
to see if their stories match up.
Roberto tells me that he gets home around 5:00 p.m. on April 30th
and that he hung out with Pablo all night.
They cooked dinner and that Laura arrived home around 11:00.
It is very interesting when Pablo and Roberto give us their accounts
of what happened that night, because none of it makes sense.
We were really unsure
what is going on and what the truth was.
[Tish] Detectives turn their attention back to Pablo's partner Laura
in hopes she'll reveal what really happened the night of Rafael's murder.
We're talking to Laura and trying to put some more pressure on her
to try to figure out why there are so many inconsistencies in her story.
And as we're asking her,
she indicates that the time that she saw Rafael
was actually earlier, a lot closer to 8:00 p.m. than 11:00 p.m.
We're able to track down her employer
who confirmed that she was at work at 11:00
and that she was there during the time that Rafael was killed.
At this point, we know now that her alibi has been confirmed
and she was not at the scene where Rafael was killed.
[Tish] Despite Laura being ruled out as a suspect,
investigators still believe that Pablo and Roberto were involved in Rafael's murder.
We began questioning Roberto more about the blood on the tag of his vehicle.
He did confirm again that he didn't know anything about the blood
and that he purchased the vehicle on May 2nd.
We went to the dealership
and found out that the vehicle was, in fact,
inside the lot at the time of the murder on May 1st.
So that vehicle was not involved in this case whatsoever.
And then we get the information back on the burner phone that Roberto has
and we're expecting that we're going to see the number
is our suspect number that communicated with Rafael.
And it comes back that it's not the number.
[gunshot firing]
That was just something that just deflated us.
Although the things that they're telling us may not be truthful,
they are really not involved in Rafael's death.
[Tish] With Pablo and Roberto eliminated as suspects
in the murder of Rafael Hernandez,
the investigation grinds to a halt.
This was a true whodunnit homicide.
We have a lot of pressure on us to try to figure out what happened.
At this point we have no idea who could have murdered Rafael.
We have to start at square one looking for who owns
that mystery number that we can't identify.
It was the last number that Rafael had made contact with.
And he's lured to his demise.
So we believe that person
is either our killer or a witness to the murder.
[Tish] In the cold-blooded murder of Rafael Hernandez,
investigators turned to state of the art technology
to uncover who called Rafael from the burner phone
that lured him to his death.
We obtained the records for the burner phone...
and as we tracked that phone, we noticed that it left Tulsa
and eventually began pinging on a cell phone tower
near the Kaney River Bridge at approximately 9:30 p.m.
on the night that Rafael was murdered.
This is very significant because it puts
the burner phone and Rafael's phone in the same vicinity
on the night of April 30th at 9:30 p.m.
At 9:48, Rafael contacts the burner phone.
At 10:17, the burner phone leaves the area
and Rafael's phone does not leave.
It stays at the same location.
At 10:24 p.m.
Ernesto calls Rafael in which he does not answer.
This is telling us that there's a 29 minute period where Rafael was murdered.
His phone never leaves the vicinity.
We conducted cell phone search records on the burner phone
and learned that the phone was purchased five days prior to the homicide
under the name of Arnulfo Mora.
We later learned that that was a fake name. No one existed by that name.
This is where it gets really crazy.
So digging more into the cell phone records,
we learned that this phone number
had communicated with some other phone numbers.
So we began calling and trying to identify those people
that this burner phone was connected to.
[Tish] Investigators zero in
on a number that a Arnulfo Mora's burner phone called numerous times
between April 25th and April 30th, the day Rafael was killed.
We come across a number
that communicates very frequently with the burner phone,
and that person is named Marco Martinez.
We do some research into him
and we find out that he has a felony warrant.
So we arrest Marco.
While Marco is in custody, we interview him.
And Marco says, "Well, I don't know who that is."
He's never seen that number before.
But typing the phone number into his phone,
it did pop up a name of Periquin.
Marco tells us that he does not know Periquin's real name
and that everyone goes by nicknames in that area.
Even though Marco doesn't know Periquins's real name...
He was able provide us the location of where Periquin lives.
And he describes Periquin's car as being a black Nissan Cube,
which is an SUV style of vehicle.
So, Periquin, he's attached to the burner phone
and now he drives a vehicle
that is very consistent with the type of vehicle that was seen
in the area of the homicide.
Marco, elaborated even more about how Periquin did have some money problems.
He had a lot of debt to people
and that he needed money to pay all these debts off.
And Marco overheard a conversation with Periquin
talking to some friends that he was upset with Rafael
because he found out that he was hitting on his wife.
Well, at this point, we're putting together
that there is a motive for jealousy
and a motive for money
- because it was known to people... - [gunshot fires]
that Rafael carried, you know, around $2,000 in cash.
[Tish] Thinking Periquin could be their killer,
investigators descend on his apartment in hopes of tracking him down.
We've basically staked the apartment complex out.
And it wasn't very long at all.
We're sitting in the parking lot
and this little guy comes out from the apartment
exactly like Marco described,
and he comes out to a black Cube.
So we end up running the tag of the vehicle
and determine that this belongs to Roman Medrano.
[Tish] With the mounting evidence against Roman,
detectives secure a search warrant for his home.
We located a ledger
which had all the people that he owed money to,
which is significant because now we corroborated that he did have debt.
During the process of the search,
we were able to find eight different phones in the house of Roman and his wife.
We did not find an actual cell phone
that was associated with the burner phone number that we were looking for.
However, one of the cell phones we discovered
was a number that the burner phone had communication with over 160 times.
We determined that cell phone belongs to Blanca who is Roman's wife.
This is very significant at the point of this investigation,
because it's only relevant and probable that that phone actually belongs to Roman
and that they were communicating together.
[car engine working]
[Tish] Having connected Roman to the burner phone
that called Rafael the night he was killed,
they haul him down to the station for questioning.
During that conversation, Roman was very standoffish
and he's very short with his answers.
And it was very clear that he was being deceitful.
Roman ended up stating
that he did know of Rafael
and he did know that Blanca had gotten a ride from him in the past.
We asked Roman about his alibi that night and where he was.
He told us that he was at home the entire night
and that his wife does not let him leave the house after 7:00, 8:00 at night.
In confronting Roman about the burner phone number,
Roman began to tell us that he does not know that number.
Roman's wife, Blanca,
has been in communication with this phone over 100 times.
So I'm asking, "Roman, if it's not you calling your wife 100 times, who is?"
And he can't provide me with a good answer for that.
Eventually he has to just kind of concede that, yes, that's me,
and that at the time of the homicide
that he had actually loaned the phone to someone else.
I think Roman is the killer. I think Roman's lying.
We can prove that a vehicle like his is in the area.
We can prove that this burner phone was in the area at the scene
communicating with his wife.
[gunshot firing]
We are convinced that Roman is actually the person that has lured Rafael
to the scene of the crime.
[gunshot firing]
Based on the evidence that we had at that point,
we felt very confident
that we could arrest Roman for the crime of murder in the first degree.
[Tish] Roman is taken into custody,
but there is still the question
of Roman's accomplice, the second killer.
We know from the scene that there was two people involved
and that one person could not have committed this crime alone.
We were very worried because
- you have a person who had killed somebody... - [gunshot firing]
running loose in the community,
- who could potentially kill another. - [gunshot firing]
So it is important for us
- to try to track this person down... - [gunshot firing]
to get him into custody so he didn't harm anyone else.
[Tish] In the brutal murder of Rafael Hernandez,
investigators have Roman Medrano in custody for first degree murder,
but they believe he had an accomplice and this person is at large.
It was clear that Roman was probably involved and that he wasn't cooperating...
but we got a break when the lab results come in
from the evidence that we sent off to be analyzed.
We find that one of the beer cans we recovered from the scene
had Roman Medrano's DNA on it.
So that gave us a physical tie to the scene with Roman Medrano.
But also there was a fingerprint pulled off
that belonged to a man by the name of Adon Mora.
[Tish] Armed with physical evidence
tying Roman Medrano and Adon Mora to the crime scene...
investigators confront Roman about his association with Adon.
He told us that he was there at the scene
because Adon had called him
because he was thirsty and brought him some beer.
They hung out for a period of time and then he left.
Which is just one of about four versions
of the story that Roman gave to us
during the course of this investigation.
He's now admitting that he's there,
but it doesn't make sense that they were just down there drinking beer
and didn't see anything
because we know that Rafael was there at the time they were.
[Tish] Having established that Roman and Adon conspired to murder Rafael,
a first degree murder warrant is issued for Adon.
It was very difficult to locate Adon.
We know that he left the state.
It took us just over one year to track down and locate Adon.
We were ultimately able to find Adon on social media
and locate him in Detroit, Michigan.
We contacted the U.S. Marshals
and within a day they had Adon in custody
and he was en route back to Oklahoma.
When interviewing Adon, we asked them about him and Roman's relationship.
And Adon was telling us that Roman was constantly asking him for money.
He was always broke.
Adon gives Roman $500
and Roman promises to give it back, but he doesn't.
We talked to Adon about the night the Rafael was killed,
and Adon began telling us that...
he wanted his $500 from Roman.
And Roman told him, "I don't have it, but a friend is going to pay it."
He said, "Meet us over here at the Kaney River Bridge and we'll get your money."
So Adon goes out there and meets Roman.
Roman makes several phone calls.
Eventually, ultimately, Rafael does show up.
Roman begins talking to Rafael about,
"Hey, I need a job. Can you help me?"
So Adon then goes in front of the vehicle to lift the hood up
and starts looking at the battery.
And then hears two gunshots.
[gunshot fires]
Adon then sees that Roman had shot and killed Rafael.
Adon says he was very confused about it all,
he says that he had no part in it
and that he didn't help plan it and that he was completely shocked.
I don't believe that Adon was telling the truth.
I believe that Adon wanted his money
and that Roman had a plan and he carried out that plan with Roman.
[gunshot fires]
It does seem that Adon and Roman
are trying to pin the homicide on each other...
[gunshot fires]
both pointing the fingers at one another.
- When two or more offenders... - [gunshot fires]
commit at least one murder,
there can be advantages such as getting one to crack.
But if they've established a consistent and believable alibi
and are loyal to each other, getting one to crack or betray the other or break ranks
can be very difficult. And what you have is essentially a stalemate.
Roman lawyered up and then part of his plea deal was to tell us what happened.
Roman eventually implicated himself during this homicide
and admitted that he was there.
The motive of Adon and Roman for this case is jealousy and money.
They both wanted money because they're both broke.
And that Roman had an additional motive for Rafael hitting on his wife.
[Tish] Detectives are now able to unravel the final 24 hours of Rafael Hernandez's life.
The plan was Roman and Adon agree to kill Rafael
and then split the money that they take from him.
On April 25th, Roman Medrano purchases the burner phone
using a fake identity.
[car engine working]
Approximately 8:30 in the evening on April 30th,
Roman and Adon drive to the area
of the King River Bridge at Highway 169.
At 9:15, they make contact with Rafael.
Roman and Adon used the ruse that they are going to get Rafael to drive them somewhere
because they're having car problems and they need help.
Rafael calls Ernesto at 9:22 p.m.
and lets him know that he has to go help a friend before he takes him to Texas.
Rafael's phone begins making contact with the tower,
putting him in the location of the homicide at approximately 9:30 p.m.
At 9:48, Rafael makes a phone call
back to the burner phone, which was his last call.
We believe that Rafael
was lured down below the bridge once he got to the area by Roman and Adon.
And once Rafael is down there,
I think that he probably starts to realize
that there's something going on that's not right.
And I think at that point,
I think that's when Roman pulls out the gun and shoots him.
[gunshot fires]
Rafael gets shot
and then Roman and Adon take the money from his pants' pockets.
Adon and a Roman then loaded Rafael's body into the trunk of the car.
[water dripping]
They drive the car right up to the edge of the river
and then pushed it over the edge into the river.
Roman's cell phone was making communication
with the tower at the scene of the homicide at 10:17,
and then records indicate that he's back in Tulsa
at 10:33 p.m. on the night of homicide.
[car engine working]
Without the cellular device and without the recent phone numbers,
this case would not have been made.
[Tish] In April 2017,
Roman Medrano waives his right to a jury trial
and enters a plea of no contest to murder in the first degree.
The judge ended up sentencing him to life with the possibility of parole.
Roman is also ordered to pay $7,000
of restitution to Rafael's family.
[Tish] Adon Mora Ramos is charged with accessory to first degree murder
and sentenced to 15 years in jail.
This is the most complex homicide I've been involved in to date.
With all the phone numbers, the nicknames,
the Hispanic Latino community with a language barrier.
All we wanted was information that we could use that was true and accurate
to find out who did this and to solve it.
It was a lot of hard work.
You know, it was a lot of frustration,
it was a lot of hours, you know, away from my family and all of our families.
But, you know, the end justifies it.
[Tish] Today, Rafael Hernandez is remembered by his family
and community as a caring man,
always ready to help a friend in need.
It was heartbreaking to learn that he was killed over money
and a possible relationship...
and that his family had to go through all that.
It is very saddening because he was a breadwinner for the family.
You know, that big heart is ultimately what lured him out there
and got him murdered.