In homicide we have, it's called "the board."
No pun intended, we live and die by the board.
All your detectives are lined up one through twelve.
It's the luck of the draw.
If you're number one or number two and that homicide line rings,
you're up.
That's how I caught three cases back to back,
uh, that, emotionally, made a huge impact on me.
Garcia's younger sister found her stabbed to death.
Police say 19-year-old Lena Kim Nguyen
was stabbed to death.
The body of 18-year-old
Jennifer Crecente
found Thursday night with a single gunshot wound.
They were beautiful, they were fun-loving,
they were caring, charismatic.
I could totally see myself as them.
And they were all brutally murdered.
Jenny, she had a gaping hole in the back of her head.
How many people have you seen like that?
It was like she was the...
detective that investigated the women hater's club or something.
As a female detective,
it's a lot of trauma to deal with.
My head wasup.
But working in a predominantly male job,
you do have to prove yourself.
So how do you keep going?
Growing up, I always wanted to be a cop.
My brother-in-law had been a police officer
and so I would see him in uniform,
and I'd look him up and down and look at his gun belt and the whole bit.
And I'm like, "Hey! Why don't you take me out on a ride along?"
I kept bugging him and bugging him
and I wore him down and he's like, "Fine."
He goes, "Don't even ask me to go to the restroom,
you don't need water, you don't need anything.
We're going from call to call and that's it."
I'm like, "All right, let's do it!"
I was like, "Hey, I think this is what I wanna do."
He's like, "You're crazy. Women shouldn't do this." And we were on the drive...
And every time he told me, "You shouldn't do this," I would do it. So...
that was just one more thing for me,
for him to tell me not to do that I did.
Fast forward, I graduated the Austin Police Academy in 1986
and I spent, uh, several years on patrol.
I think police work is always a boy's club.
There's not a whole lot of females that are attracted to police work.
Uh, the Austin PD as of today has 1,800 officers
and there's still only maybe, I would say, 11, maybe 12% female.
Female police officers in general, you know, already have like a,
a bit of a barrier.
But I've known Lisa since the day I stepped on the street in a uniform,
and I just expected her, that she was gonna go.
She's well-focused on her mission.
I went to work the gang unit, did that for about five years.
I did some undercover work, including prostitution, narcotics.
I enjoyed, you know, working with the guys,
but sometimes you'd open that door and you'd be like,
"All right, , I'm bleeding.
And I'm in no mood.
So don't with me right now."
I ended up promoting to detective in the year 2000.
When I went to the homicide unit,
I was like, "Oh, my God. This is real," you know?
Because, you know, with gangs and robberies and whatever else,
your suspects all circle back around,
but with homicide it's... That's it. That is the ultimate crime.
9-1-1, where is your emergency?
January 26, 2004.
I got notified of a suspicious death in northwest Austin.
When I caught this case, or when this case caught me, was early in my career.
It's stress, it's a lot of pressure.
Like, this was her first major homicide investigation,
and I was assigned as the primary support investigator.
I responded directly to the scene.
Being the, the number one,
you feel the weight of the world on you.
You're trying to remember everything that you're supposed to be doing,
um, because you don't wanna screw up.
You, you just don't wanna screw up.
Talking to the two young girls that were living there, a 13-year-old
and a 16-year-old, that the oldest sister, 18-year-old Virginia Garcia,
also known as Jenny, was found dead in her bedroom.
Brutally murdered.
As you walk into her bedroom,
what you're seeing is a half-naked young female,
uh, her head covered in a pillowcase, bloody pillowcase.
She was nude from, from the waist down.
This particular case had what appeared to,
to potentially be a, a sexual component to it.
She sustained three stab wounds.
And the knife is protruding from her, her chest.
Her arms were bent at the elbows
and pulled back behind her to the small of her back.
They appeared to be tightly bound.
It was... it was very brutal.
And I imagine, you know, that she was, she was just in terror.
The suspect broke a window, went in through the laundry room.
Um, that's how he gained entry into the house.
The family was a mother, father and three young, young girls.
The victim's sisters came home from school
and ended up finding, um, their older sister in her bedroom...
deceased.
And, so they're actually the ones that, that placed the 9-1-1 call
from the neighbor's.
We're processing the crime scene.
It appeared that each of the bedrooms had been ran sacked.
There was jewelry that was stolen.
Honestly, my first thought was it was burglary in progress,
and she comes home, and she catches the suspect.
And at that point, he's like, "I'm . I have to do something with this girl."
It wasn't until we rolled her over
that we were able to see what she was bound with,
which were the zip ties.
So now it appeared to be more methodical.
It wasn't just a simple burglary.
It looked intentional.
I'm like, "You, you tied her up
and you plunged that knife in her chest as your exclamation mark."
I told Jenny, "I'm gonna find who did this to you.
Whatever it takes, I'm gonna find who did this to you."
As we were working the crime scene,
we found that the phone lines had been cut.
An individual normally would not go those lengths to, to cut the phone line.
And we also were not able to find any other knifes inside that residence
that matched that particular knife that was used.
It appeared that the perpetrator brought that knife with him.
So there was just more and more mounting evidence
that suggested that this had been pre-planned.
This wasn't just a random act.
And there was certainly concern
that we potentially could be dealing with, with a serial killer.
My initial thought was not a serial killer necessarily,
but it could it be somebody that she really knows.
Family members, a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend, or something.
Because the pillowcase being over the victim's head
could be somewhat of an indicator
that the suspect didn't want the victim looking at him
while he was murdering her, so that it's not real.
It's not real to the suspect.
On Jenny's left upper thigh area there was a...
what looked like, kind of, drying sperm
which we collected in order to be able to test for DNA.
There was an uncapped lotion bottle on the floor on the victim's bedroom,
so it certainly gave the appearance
that the assailant in this case, uh, was, was possibly masturbating.
Who, who, who does that?
What kind of person does that?
That's just some sick behavior.
Around where the, where the blade was at,
there was blood smear and it was in the shape of a heart.
We look at that blood smear,
and it didn't follow the natural laws of gravity.
And, to me, it wasn't accidental.
It's weird what sticks out, you know, as you're going through a crime scene.
The house was very tidy and organized,
but there was chocolate wrappings
just kind of around the house and so,
I don't know, for some reason,
they just... It was like a glaring neon sign to me,
that's why I instructed crime scene to go ahead
and, and collect whatever wrappings they could find
for any type of, like, DNA comparison or fingerprint comparison.
The image that will stay forever in my mind
is seeing those chocolates.
In my head I'm thinking,
"Did this eat the chocolates
while he was waiting to kill this young girl?"
We learned that the victim in this case was a student
at Saint Edwards University, in South Austin.
You know, we wanted to pin down her timeline
for, at least, the last 24 hours.
We reached out to each one of her professors
and they established that she was indeed present.
So she had left school, arrived home around 4:00
and she was supposed to pick up a younger sister at about 5:00 p.m.
And when she failed to do so,
that sister tried to reach her by cellular telephone
and was not able to establish contact.
It was not long after that,
that the body of the victim was found in the bedroom.
Jenny worked at a local restaurant.
She was very well-liked.
In interviewing, you know, the people that she worked with,
is that she was just a very kind of charismatic well-liked, well-behaved.
She was just a good girl.
Who would have wanted to do this to Jenny?
We didn't have any leads at that point in time.
In homicide, your baptismal is the first case, right?
Depending if youup, they're like, "You can't be in here.
You cannot be in this unit."
So, the weight of solving it,
you wanna do everything right.
I was lucky, cause early on in my career,
I was taught by the best.
Bruce was not only my FTO, my field training officer,
he was a mentor, a teacher, but most importantly,
he was like a brother to me.
He was what was known as a cop's cop.
First man we caught.
If somebody said, "What's the one officer
you would wanna have with you on any given call?"
He would be the first one chosen.
Although he was a patrol officer,
he could run circles around detectives,
or sergeants, or lieutenants.
And so, even when I was in homicide, I would count on him.
I know she was still consulting with Bruce on investigations.
Bruce was always there in her career and in her life.
I spoke to Bruce about Jenny Garcia's crime scene.
I wanted him to, in his head, see what I saw.
And then get his feedback on the type of suspect.
We talked about binding and gagging her. He terrorized her.
And I told him, "I'm thinking it may have been boyfriend or ex-boyfriend."
And he goes, "But what if it's like some dude
that, you know, she didn't wanna mess with?"
And I'm like, "Well, then there's that possibility."
To plunge a knife in her chest through her heart,
that, that's a lot of hate. Bruce agreed, it was hatred.
That was hate.
My recollection of the father is that he appeared overly distraught.
Very, uh, melodramatic.
He was inconsolable.
The father was a taxicab driver here in Austin.
Turns out he was at work at the time.
Mrs. Garcia was very, I mean, she was distraught, but she held it together.
She couldn't break down, she had to keep her together for everybody else.
And I believe she did that because she knew
that her husband was inconsolable.
I don't think that there's another job on this planet
where the weight and gravity of somebody's death
gets thrust upon you like that.
You learn a lot about, a lot about yourself.
I used to ask the family for a photograph
and then I would post that photograph
and every day I didn't solve that homicide,
that was my reminder of how hard I had to work.
As you're progressing on the case,
several things are running through your mind,
and you can't box yourself in just with one theory.
Whether it was a current boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend,
a stranger, you have to leave everything open,
and the evidence will take you where it takes you.
Jenny did have a boyfriend at the time.
He was a person of interest.
They worked together at the same restaurant.
He was obviously still in a state of shock,
but it looked like Jenny and him were...
they were in a good place in their relationship.
From the other interviews, nobody had anything negative to say about Jonathan.
And he was even asked for a DNA sample, which he voluntarily gave.
Jenny Garcia, we approximate,
she was dead by the, by the time,
a little after 5:00.
Eventually, we were able to confirm
that he had been at work at the time.
So, we had to, you know, look for another suspect.
The way the Austin Police Department homicide unit functions at a high level
is because it becomes a full-team effort.
Basically, you have a homicide briefing
and as the lead detective, which would be me,
you start tasking different detectives.
So, we're at the homicide unit,
talking about the case...
...and the homicide main line rings,
and Detective Walker answers the phone.
You could kind of hear him, he was a little bit bothered by the, by the caller
and somebody turned around and said, "Who was that?" And he goes, "I don't know.
I got some guy named David," I think,
and he was asking if his friend was okay
because he sees the news crews were out at her house.
Walker asked him, "Well, who's your friend?"
And he mentioned the victim's name.
TV was on in the room where we were briefing.
Jenny's younger sister found her stabbed to death...
We're looking at the TV and the cameras from the local news crews
were not at her house.
They were down the street at the, at the corner at an intersection.
And so, I was like, "How did he know all that information?"
That definitely piqued our interest.
This looked to be a fishing expedition that an individual
was wanting to know what we knew and what we thought had happened.
Once he hung up, we tracked the phone number down to David Diaz Morales.
That phone call turns out to be a big break in this case.
So we asked Jenny's boyfriend about David Diaz Morales.
He recognized the, the name
and they all worked together at an Austin diner.
And David always wanted to try to hook up with Jenny
and Jenny was like, "No, no, no,"
and she finally had to tell him, "No way, no how. It will never happen."
I asked Detective De Los Santos and Detective Scanlon
to go out and pick up this David Diaz and bring him to the station.
Me and another detective got it a car
and went to his apartment,
woke up his sister,
woke him up and just told him who we were
and that we would like for him to come down to the office
and talk to us about his friend, Jenny.
He didn't ask any questions, "Why me?" You know.
He just said, "Okay, let me get dressed."
It was really cold outside, we went in the apartment
and we're standing there while he's getting dressed in his room
and I'm just kinda scanning with my eyes
and I see some jewelry sitting on top of a, like, an entertainment cabinet.
They know that the Garcia home
had basically been burglarized
and jewelry was stolen.
I was like, "Holy."
He's brought back to the office,
you know, it's 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.
I don't remember exactly what time it was.
We put him in an interview room and, eventually,
myself and Detective Eric De Los Santos went in
and conducted an interview with him.
Detective Scanlon and Detective De Los Santos
were interviewing David Diaz Morales.
I think David Morales reacted better to Kerry and Erick
as males as opposed to if I had interviewed him.
He had some sort of, like, female issues, you know?
The interview was one of those where the suspect that you're talking to
is convinced that he can convince you that is not him.
De Los Santos noticed that the t-shirt that Morales was wearing,
um, had a stain on it.
And Erick looked at it and said,
"I think that's a body fluid."
He may have been using the lotion to masturbate with
and then he ejaculated
and then part of his ejaculation
ended up on her, on her thigh
in addition to, possibly, the t-shirt he was wearing.
It was just kind of surreal to me
because he really couldn't argue that it wasn't.
You know, as he's being interviewed...
I'm thinking,
"Were you in that house waiting to kill Jenny
eating these peoples' chocolates?"
Like, "It's no big deal.
I'll just sit here and wait because, you know,
I have a plan and I know what my endgame is gonna be,
but in the meantime, I'm just gonna sit here
and, oh, yeah, I'll have some chocolate."
In my experience, I have not seen
any suspect that has broken into a residence
and sat there and ate the victim's food.
It's crazy.
So I got a search warrant for Morales' apartment.
So we secured the search warrant
at the residence of Dave Morales,
where we found a number of pornographic DVDs
that depicted victims in various cases of bondage.
We also discovered that, behind his television set,
there were a number of loose black zip ties
that were consistent with the bindings that were used on the victim,
that were used to tie her hands behind her back,
and we were able to confirm that the knife that was entailed in the chest cavity
of the victim, that was consistent with the set of knives at his apartment.
I remember thinking, "Thiswormy guy
broke into this girl's house, tied her up,
jacked off on her.
He got rejected by her and his way of dealing with it is to kill her."
He had requested an attorney,
but, in the meantime, we ended up arresting him.
David Diaz Morales met with his sister.
He essentially admitted to her that he had killed Jenny,
but really wouldn't give her a reason why.
This case, it was...
it was very difficult. It was very difficult.
Every time Christmas comes around
and I see those chocolates, it just...
it takes me back to that crime scene.
I associate chocolate with Jenny's death.
I actually went and bought chocolates
and I'm like, "I just can't do it."
I love chocolate, but I just can't do that.
It taught me, I guess that, you know, it can go from roses one day
to a knife in the chest the next day.
The smear of blood on her chest in the shape of a heart,
that question never got answered.
And you don't always get those answers, right?
But you got the person that did it.
I felt a sense of relief knowing that we had
the right person that killed Jenny.
I felt like I belonged,
that the Jenny Garcia case gave me the, the confidence
to know I can hang with some of these guys in homicide
that I had, you know, looked up to and admired.
I can, I can do this.
Kerry pages me.
I was at dinner with my husband,
he's like, "Hey, I'm out at a scene
and it looks like it's gonna be a murder."
I thought, "Oh, my gosh."
Now there's another young woman that, that has been murdered.
Police say 19-year-old Lena Kim Nguyen
was found Wednesday evening around seven by her sister.
Lena was stabbed to death in her Gracy Farms apartment.
We were notified by her sister
when she came home,
she found the door was locked from the inside.
She knew that her sister was there,
tried to knock several times and there was no answer.
At which time the sister calls her boyfriend,
the boyfriend comes over and he tries to get in.
It was a second story apartment,
so he ends up scaling the balcony
and gets onto the patio area
and the patio door is open,
which was not too unusual because they had a dog
and so, they would leave the patio door open
so the dog could come in and out.
Lena's sister's boyfriend
found Lena in that apartment and called the police.
As we enter the apartment,
it's only a one-bedroom apartment,
and so we walk through the front door
and it's a small living room area
with an adjacent little kitchenette,
that's where the computer was.
It appeared to me that she was seated in a chair
and her attacker came up behind her
and pulled her down onto the floor.
And assaulted her with a knife.
Nothing can prepare you for seeing
some of the horrific things that you see at crime scenes.
The dog was running around in the apartment
and had been, uh...
had been licking on Lena and had blood on his, on his mouth.
And I remember thinking, "Man, if you could only talk," you know?
"What would you tell me?"
She had just gotten out of the shower.
I believe her hair was still wet
and she was on her computer.
And he...
he grabbed her by the hair, exposed her neck,
first couple of puncture wounds
was enough to have killed her.
All the other puncture wounds were post-mortem.
Multiple stab wounds like that, somebody's angry.
Someone is angry.
This is personal.
It didn't appear as if it was a burglary gone bad.
As I'm standing there, looking at the victim,
it takes me back to Jenny Garcia's crime scene.
Another young woman in Austin, Texas,
murdered during the prime of her life.
As a female detective, that, that moment
hits you really hard.
It's a lot of trauma to deal with.
I still keep a framed photo of, of Lena.
And it's in a box at, at my house.
And she's just a gorgeous girl with just a really beautiful smile.
So young and full of life.
It just... uh...
She looks like sunshine, that's my best description of her.
She looks like sunshine in that picture.
Every day, I would, I would look at it.
I imagine her telling me,
"Have you found who did this to me?"
Similar to Jenny, you know,
I told her, "I'm gonna..."
You know, "I'm gonna try my hardest to find out who, who did this to you."
As the lead detective, you're kinda watching,
you know, all your people that you delegated to do X, Y, and Z,
and they're coming back to you,
and, and giving you information.
There was a neighbor who witnessed an individual
run from the vicinity of the apartment complex
that was dressed in dark clothing articles.
I found a shoe impression in some dirt,
and we took a picture of it.
We did a technique called luminol...
...to try to illuminate blood stains
that we didn't see with our naked eye.
And it reacted to the kitchen sink.
Did somebody after they stabbed her,
you know, wash their, wash their hands?
When we swab the dog, the blood on the dog,
we were hoping that we can develop a profile from the blood
that might help us identify our suspect.
But the dog only had Lena's blood on her.
After all the efforts we put into this crime scene,
the swabbing of different objects
and hoping that we were going to collect something
that was gonna help us to develop a profile,
be it to our frustration,
ultimately we didn't find any DNA at the crime scene.
Through the autopsy,
through the medical examiner's report,
we found out that she had not been sexually assaulted.
With no DNA coming back, I didn't feel like we had any solid evidence.
And that's when personal relationships become very important.
Lena was a young, beautiful girl.
She was popular, she was dating a guy by the name of Chris.
Lena's sister, she gave me the backstory on their relationship.
There was nothing significant about Chris
that stood out to me as him being suspicious.
There were several guys that were interested in her.
There was an older white male in the complex
apparently that took a liking to her.
So, I had to research
and be able to eliminate a bunch of these other loose ends.
But the one name that kept coming up
was Lena's ex-boyfriend, Tai Ho.
They had separated, you know, upwards to six months ago.
But we're now learning that he was harassing her,
and we found out through another individual
that he would become upset whenever there was mention of her name.
We found out that they had somewhat of a volatile relationship.
And he was living in the Fort Worth area,
which is about 170 miles from, from Austin to Fort Worth.
So we immediately made plans to depart Austin and head to Fort Worth
to, to contact this individual.
Tai Ho was living with his friend and his friend's family
because his own family moved to California.
He remained in Texas to finish high school.
So we meet up at the address where Tai Ho is living
and we end up getting consent from Tai Ho
to search his vehicle.
We did locate photographs of Lena in his car.
He, somehow, saw a picture of Lena
and the new boyfriend and they were kissing and that affected him.
He was asked if he would be willing
to come down to the Fort Worth Police Department.
I had already been up over 24 hours at that point.
My first impression of Tai Ho is he was just, he was very calm.
So his story was that he drove his friend to school in Fort Worth,
dropped him off, came back home, slept, got up,
went to go play basketball with some people that he really couldn't identify
or give me names and then, eventually, comes back home.
He was trying to play it really, really cool.
Like, "No big deal, I was here in Fort Worth."
We're evaluating his responses to our questions,
and I noticed that he had sustained an injury to his left hand.
It appeared to be fairly fresh.
It was something that was scarred or even scabbed over.
Definitely piqued my interest, because he didn't have a reasonable explanation
as to why that injury was sustained.
He denies killing her throughout the whole time
and he denies ever being in Austin.
But he does tell me that he still loved her
and that he wanted to be with her.
The interview started about 9:45 p.m.
and we finally ended at 4:00 in the morning.
And then... Tai Ho asked,
"Do you guys know of a church that is close by?"
And I think Dave and I looked at each other, like, "What?"
"Okay, is this the moment?" You know?
"Is he fixing a crack at this point?"
It was clever not to push and ask in that particular point in time,
so I posed a question, I asked him if he was religious.
And he indicated that he was not.
I think that he was probably thinking,
"I should just spill it. I should just tell them what I did."
But he couldn't quite get himself there.
He became more than just a person of interest to me at that point.
He goes from person of interest to suspect.
He was a senior at Crawley High School.
One of the girls at the high school tells us that Tai Ho
was wanting to get gloves, wanting to get dark clothing, wanting to get a gun.
She heard Tai Ho talking to people,
asking specifically for these things.
I knew at that point in the investigation
that there was a witness
that was near the apartment complex,
around the time of the murder in Austin
who observed an individual wearing dark color clothing
fleeing from the vicinity of the apartment.
In interviewing this girl,
I asked her if she thought that Tai Ho was capable of murdering somebody
and she said, "Yeah."
She thought he was capable.
We checked attendance records and Tai Ho was not at school
on the day of Lena Nguyen's murder.
But that was circumstantial evidence.
I wanted more.
We were searching her cellphone activity,
we're searching her computer activity
and we finally catch a big break at that time.
We discovered that Tai Ho hacked into her account.
There was indication that he had been harassing her
up until the point of, he was stalking.
We found through Tai Ho's AOL account
that he had documented a conversation
in which he pretended to be Lena Nguyen
where he acted as though it was a loving engagement back and forth
between the two of them
where he would ask how she was doing
and then he would impersonate her and respond that she was fine.
This was clearly an individual that was not willing
to give up on the relationship.
She posted this thing like, "Leave me alone.
Quit bugging me. You're blowing up my phone.
It's over. Stop calling me 1,000 times a day.
What do I need, a restraining order?"
And I believe, to me, in reading that post,
she's referring to Tai Ho without actually saying his name.
And there at the end of that entry, she's pleading for help.
While investigating Tai Ho,
we pulled his cellphone records.
Cell tower hit Waco,
which would be the, the path taken by Tai Ho
from the Fort Worth area through Waco to Austin.
That was a huge lead in, in this case.
Ultimately, we were able to put his, put his cellphone
in Austin at the time of Lena's murder.
I contacted Tai Ho and told him
that if he wanted to drive down to Austin to pick up
some of the items that I had seized from him
after Lena's murder, he could come pick them up.
He drove to Austin,
we wanted to see if he would submit to a polygraph.
He voluntarily took a polygraph and he failed it.
The DA felt that we had enough at that point to, to cut a warrant.
We took his vehicle again,
and this time for forensic processing.
It's during the course of this search we found a pair of shoes
in the trunk of the vehicle.
The imprint impression at the scene
appeared to be one and the same.
We had really solid evidence against Tai Ho at this point,
but I still knew that I had to get a confession.
So during the course of the interrogation, I'm thinking about Bruce.
Since he had been my field training officer
and my partner in the gang unit,
I learned interview and interrogation skills from him.
You work in an interview interrogation different ways
and within that same interrogation you might go hard,
you know, on somebody and then back off
and then give them a little bit of time to breathe,
think about things.
I spoke to Bruce about just the marathon interview with him.
It's just mentally and physically
and emotionally exhausting interviewing somebody for hours on end.
He goes, "And what did you get out of it?" I said, "Jack"
At that point, we felt like we had
enough probable cause to, to arrest him.
That could be the extra pressure
needed to try to get a confession.
He tells us that he wants to talk to Lena's sister.
We didn't know the nature of the request
at that particular point in time,
but it's definitely intriguing that he was wanting to, to reach out.
At some point, we have to make a calculated decision
to see if the suspect regrets any of his actions
and will confess his crime to the victim's family.
So, in essence, she was being used as a, a vehicle,
but I prepped Lena's sister, Thoa, before allowing her
to go into the room with Tai Ho.
I felt bad for her, I mean, I did not want to have to send her in,
but she wanted to step up to the plate to try to help her sister.
He whispered in her ear
something to the fact that...
"You've got the right person in the chair"
and that he was responsible.
I think maybe he felt like, you know, Thoa was, she wasn't law enforcement.
If he actually said it to me,
then that would mean that, yes, he did it.
But if he told Thoa,
then it was just basically, he's like, "I'm sorry."
That was a confession at that point.
For him to now say that we had the right person in the chair,
that was quite a revelation.
Tai Ho was charged with the murder of Lena Nguyen,
and he was sentenced to 75 years in prison.
I take Lena's picture down and then I file it
in the, in the case jacket, at the very front of the case jacket
so that you, you see the person's face.
It's not just a case number.
My brother-in-law, like I said earlier,
was not real keen on women being police officers,
but after the Lena Nguyen's case,
he's like, "Oh, okay, I'm proud of you."
You know, just that quick, "Okay, I'm proud of you."
The other homicides detectives had kind of dubbed me
"the women hater club detective"
because I had these back-to-back homicides of young females
that were being murdered.
I'm like, what... You know? How do these young women's cases
land on my, on my lap.
Um... I don't know.
Working homicides are more of a calling.
It's almost like your life doesn't really belong to you anymore.
Your life belongs to the board.
The board is cruel.
On February the 17th, 2006,
I was wrapping up Lena Nguyen's case and...
I'm up on the, on the board again as the number one.
I get a call and I thought, "Oh, my gosh,
not another young woman that, that has been murdered."
I responded to the 8,500 block of Coppiano Drive.
A man walking his dog found a body in the woods,
just on the other side of a retention pond.
One that particular day, it was a cold and overcast.
We had to walk through some cedar trees to get to the body.
Growing up, I always wanted to be a cop,
but nothing can prepare you for the things that you see in the homicide unit.
Although it's beautiful what they've done with this crime scene area,
the vision in my head will always remain the way I last saw her.
She had a large gaping wound,
and the back of her head had been shot off.
I couldn't see her face because her actual hair
was over her, and she had long hair,
was over her, her head.
One of the things that was really significant to me and very memorable
was she had kind of light brown hair
and strands of her hair were in the tree branches.
Her brain was scattered
as a result of the weapon that she was shot with
and in processing the crime scene and walking around there,
I had accidently stepped on a piece of her brain.
And I was like, "Oh, no."
That felt horrible.
It's just... That was a horrible feeling.
Um...
In this case,
the devastation that resulted from the wound inflicted on her...
I mean, I wouldn't even describe it for you
because I don't want anybody else...
A young girl out in the woods...
just... dying in that manner.
I mean, any homicide detective will tell you,
yeah, it does, it takes a toll on you.
We found a Texas driver's license
that identified her as Jennifer Crecente.
Jenny Garcia,
Lena Nguyen,
now we have Jennifer Crecente.
Quiet Coppiano St. overtaken by cops,
cruisers and crime scene tape.
The body of 18-year-old Jennifer found Thursday night with a single gunshot wound.
Doug Mamouser found the body while walking his dog.
My heart was racing and, uh...
It was just very upsetting.
While I was processing the crime scene,
Kerry's at the mother's house interviewing her.
You could just see she was crushed.
They talked to me for a long time.
Over 30 minutes
and then they finally said that, yes, that was her.
And I put my head down on my coffee table
and then I just started
banging my head on the coffee table and I started to cry.
I just remember looking at her and looking around
and there was nobody there for her except for us.
Doesn't feel good telling somebody
that you just found their daughter in a field.
Jennifer was a very unique girl.
She was born an adult.
She was pretty fiercely protective of the people that she loved,
and I know very strongly that she knew
that I loved her beyond measure.
In talking to Jennifer's mother, Elizabeth,
we knew that one of the last people
that Jennifer was probably with
or had talked to
was her ex-boyfriend Justin Crabbe.
Jennifer dated Justin for two-and-a-half years
and it was up, down, all around.
It was pretty volatile.
And she was experiencing dating abuse.
It was emotional and verbal abuse,
it was not physical abuse.
I literally woke up every single day and said, "How can I help her today?"
"What can I say? Who can I go to?"
There was a stay-away agreement at school,
he showed up anyway.
I asked Jennifer's therapist
to, to help and so many people I went to and said,
"Please, help my daughter."
But I would hear things like, "Well, she's in a bad boy stage,
you just need to let that play out."
It was scary.
Yeah, it was just a toxic relationship
and that's been confirmed through the statements from Jennifer's friends.
So we knew we had to find Justin.
So I'm going back to the office
and conducting computer research to see what kind of involvement
Justin had with the Austin Police Department
and try to figure out where he was at,
at the time of, of Jennifer's murder.
With all my homicide cases, I always talked to Bruce about them.
He was my touchstone, he was my rock.
He was the go-to person for me.
My phone rings and it's my supervisor
and...
he was very, very nervous and he was like, "Lisa, I have to tell you something,"
you know... Uh, "Bruce killed himself."
And...
Uh...
I just instantly started, uh, shaking.
There are no words
when somebody that you know and you love,
and you admire, and you respect commits suicide.
I personally do not know...
what was going through his mind at the time.
He told me that he was gonna retire.
I was a little concerned about him retiring because he's always worked.
So after his suicide, everybody goes through this.
"What if I had done this?" "What if I had done that?"
You know, the back-to-back murders of these young women
and then Bruce's suicide absolutely pushed me to the...
to my limit.
I wasup.
After his, his suicide, you know, going back to work,
I felt like did the other homicide detectives
really want me in that condition
coming back to a unit where you have to give 150%?
You don't wanna screw it up, so I had a meeting with the other detectives
and, and the sergeants, and I actually told them,
"I feel like I'mup.
Um... But I'm trying to work through it.
But if you guys don't feel that I'm up to par to do the job,
then let me know and then I'll go find
another, another position within the police department."
After Bruce's death, when Lisa came back to the office,
um, she did acknowledge that it was really...
some... something that's impacted her.
I walked out, let them talk.
But I did not want to leave.
These were cases that were very, very involved
and taxing on everyone in the homicide unit.
I knew what Bruce meant to Lisa.
I worked Bruce's suicide.
I remember looking at him and thinking,
"We just played golf together, like, last week,"
and...
Um...
it just, it doesn't get easy.
But when Lisa expressed that, you know,
she possibly couldn't do the job anymore,
my thought was to let her know that, "Yes, you can," you know?
"You absolutely can still do this job
because you're that good of a detective."
I... to the last one, every detective, sergeant in that unit was
there behind her 100%. We needed Lisa.
You know, sure enough,
I came back and they're like, "Nope. We still want you in here."
My coworkers helped me get through Bruce's death.
I think through the other homicide detectives' eyes,
when I first came into homicide,
in their eyes I belonged, but in my own eyes
it wasn't until I got pushed to the absolute edge after his suicide
and their "Yes, we want you here"
that in my mind I felt, "Okay, I belong. I do belong in here."
They taught me, I guess that...
I'm a lot stronger than what I even thought I was.
Like I had enough in me
to know that the way to help me heal
was to go back to a job that deals with death.
I don't know if that makes sense to anybody, but...
I felt like...
I felt like that's what I needed.
Because, you know, and it's not about you.
It's about Jennifer.
Figuring out who did this to her.
I think with Justin Crabbe and the history of that relationship,
you have to recognize the toxicity
or maybe she just finally had it with him
and this time they were broken up
and, you know, with a lot of these guys
it gets to be, "Well, if I can't have her, nobody will."
I'm getting a notification
from the crime scene and the detectives out there that they found a shotgun
in a duffle bag that was discarded out there.
Around the same time, I go to the office,
I get a notification that Justin
was seen diving out the back window of his house,
climbing over a wood privacy fence to the street behind his
and jumping into a waiting cab
and when he got in the cab, he ducked down.
My sergeant's talking with the officers,
he lets them know that, you know,
they need to go ahead and stop him and detain him.
He's brought back to the office...
He's defeated before we even get in a room.
In that interview, he was just like not engaging at all, parley with me.
Um, he kept playing his head down on the table.
I'd been working a long time, right?
This was like starting at 7:00,
or so the night before and, you know,
and I'm just looking at somebody
that I feel like has just wrecked a lot of lives
and, um... I just opened the door, and I grabbed that table,
and I pushed that table out the door.
Now he tells a story and it's a lot different
than what he was telling before.
And that his friend has this shotgun in his hands
and he's acting like he's Elmer Fudd
hunting rabbits and hunting ducks in the woods.
And now he tells a story
that Jennifer is walking about 20 to 30 ft. in front of him
and his friend, not paying attention to them,
and Justin says, "I reached over his hands
and grabbed the shotgun and said,
'Let me have it for a minute or whatever'."
And his words were...
I already know that's not true
because I've been briefed by Detective Morrill.
So his story didn't match up to the crime scene.
She was on her knees, bent over,
one arm bent and the other,
like the other hand kind of like in this position, like in an upward position.
You know, she's trying to beg for her life
by trying to reason with the shooter.
He realized that she was directed to get on her knees
and essentially be executed.
We knew that we were going to arrest him at that point.
In the end, Justin and his lawyer and the prosecution
came to a plea agreement for 30 years or 35 years
in the Texas Department of Corrections...
and...
I don't know, I just don't feel like that was enough.
It isn't until kinda after you wrap the case up
and you put the killer in jail
that you sit back and can breathe a little bit.
So I don't, I don't really feel complete
until I know that they're actually in prison.
These amazing detectives,
I'm, I'm still really grateful to them
that they're able to relate to me
and, you know, I take them cookies down to the homicide unit
and we sit, and we talk.
There were a lot of little kindnesses
along the way and that made me feel hopeful.
They chose to do their job, but, but... but with a heart.
I look at all these girls, they were beautiful,
they were fun-loving, they were caring, charismatic.
And their killers took that light from these girls.
They died before they got a chance to even know who they are.
When you talk about Jenny Garcia
and Lena Nguyen and Jennifer Crecente,
Detective Morrill becomes a part of those stories.
Those stories also become a part of Detective Morrill.
I don't ever believe that the families of the victims
ever get closure.
I think that they learn to deal with their loss,
but it's always lingering, they'll never forget.
It's the same thing with me.
I will think about these girls forever.
But I realized afterwards that working homicide
has been the most satisfying job
within the police department that I have ever worked.
And sometimes I think, "What would Bruce tell me?"
He would tell me, "If you wanna stay there, thenstay there."
You just keep going, you keep moving forward.
Just by doing this job and doing it right,
doing it with the heart that she has,
she makes other detectives around her that much better.
It truly is...
It truly is a band of brothers and sisters.