- A 19-year-old woman
Brutally murdered in her bronx bedroom...
- There was a knife on the bed
And there was a strong indication
That it was a sexual crime.
- I don't wish nobody to see their daughter
The way I saw my daughter.
- A second murder with the same signature...
- The first thing I thought at that point was
A possible serial killer.
- Lead after lead goes nowhere.
- All the investigators were frustrated.
- To be honest, I felt like
Maybe now they're never gonna catch him.
- But giving up isn't in the new york vocabulary.
- You don't want the guy who's eating cheez doodles
And watching the yankee game.
You want the guy who's gonna tear things apart.
- And catching the killer all hinges on
An intricate undercover operation.
- Is that gonna trigger him?
Is he going to try to flee?
- You need everybody with their eye on the prize.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[police sirens]
- If there's one word to describe
A new york city homicide detective, it's relentless.
[indistinct radio chatter]
So when two young women's lives are tragically cut short,
We refused to give up,
Even as the case stretched out over 20 years.
In west farms, a section of the bronx
Rich with puerto rican heritage,
The almontaser family is venturing out
For a neighborhood holiday tradition.
- The christmas house,
Every year, we would go and see what was new.
They just decorate that house from top to bottom.
And you'll see lines parked, everybody outside the house.
It was like a tradition.
- After leaving the christmas house,
Daniel almontaser drives his sister dora, aged 19,
To their uncle's house, where she is house sitting.
- When we dropped her off, she went upstairs,
And she opened the window. She said, "I'm good. I'm safe.
You can go home."
She closed the window and I went straight home.
[phone dialing]
- 2:00 in the morning, she called me that day.
[line ringing]
She sounded happy. She sounded ok.
She said, "mami, I don't know if I'll see you tomorrow."
I didn't know that was gonna be the last time
I spoke to my daughter.
And I didn't know that was gonna be
The worst day of my life. I didn't know that.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
Got up like around 12:00 in the afternoon.
I called.
She didn't pick up the phone.
[phone ringing]
- My mother, she said, "oh, let's go.
Let's see what's going on."
- That night, dora's mother, brother daniel,
And his friend eddie go to check on dora.
- She went upstairs with eddie.
[knocking]
- I knock, knock, knock, knock.
No response at all.
[door creaks]
The door, it was open.
I went inside.
And when I walked through the living room,
I heard like some music coming from the room.
[spanish dance music playing]
♪ ♪
He looked straight--
Oh, my goodness.
Ooh, what I saw that day,
I don't wish nobody to see their daughter
The way I saw my daughter.
That was the worst nightmare.
♪ ♪
- Eddie came downstairs screaming
For me to leave the car
And I went upstairs and...
I saw her dead in the-- in the bed.
♪ ♪
I was just, like, broke down.
- They notified the police immediately.
- The crime scene was horrifying.
♪ ♪
You have a mother finding her daughter dead,
Naked in the bed.
It's something that I remember to this day.
♪ ♪
- Dora was found face up.
She had a form of ligature wrapped around her neck.
[indistinct radio chatter]
Believe it was obvious to everybody concerned that
She was strangled to death.
- The telephone cord had been ripped out of the telephone.
- We know that the door was open
And the mother was able to walk right into the apartment.
- There was $69 in cash.
There was jewelry.
There was a nintendo box.
All these things remained.
- There's no sign of forced entry
And nothing else in the apartment
Seems to be in disarray.
Leading investigators to believe
This isn't a robbery gone wrong.
♪ ♪
- There was a knife on the bed.
- We don't know why the knife was there.
You can infer that maybe it was used to threaten dora,
To make her more amenable to a sex act.
It would be standard procedure that the medical examiner
Would perform a rape kit to determine
If, in fact, she had been sexually assaulted.
- The knife did not produce any wounds to her.
The murder weapon in the case of dora
Was the telephone cord.
♪ ♪
- The apartment was processed for fingerprints.
There were no fingerprints found on the knife.
There were no fingerprints found on the phone cord.
- But the telephone receiver was examined
By the crime scene unit
And a fingerprint was recovered from that telephone.
♪ ♪
- When she was brought for autopsy,
The presence of semen was found.
That sample was sent for further testing.
- While they wait for dna and fingerprint analysis,
Detectives speak to dora's family
To learn more about her.
- Me and my sister was real close.
She always had a great heart.
You know, I think that's how god made her,
With a great heart.
- She was only 19 years old.
My sister was still a kid.
She was just starting to live life.
She's always been babysitting and having kids around her.
- She wanted to be a mother so bad.
She loved kids. She loved them.
- And it seemed like dora was on her way
To living that dream.
At 17, dora married 30-year-old david almontaser,
The owner of a convenience store.
- In the beginning, I think it was beautiful.
But then after a while, he didn't have time for her.
- We used to stay over at the house
But david was never there.
He used to come, like, late, late at night.
They used to argue a lot at night
Because of not spending time with each other.
- Recently, things in the marriage
Had come to a crossroads.
And dora decided to move out
And stay at her uncle's place while it was unoccupied.
- I think she didn't want to be in the relationship anymore.
♪ ♪
- David seems visibly devastated over dora's death.
But given their past and their relationship,
They need to bring him in for an interview.
- He was interviewed several times.
We're looking at his business.
Is he tied up with bad guys?
Was there a violent history between him and dora?
- The marriage was not on solid ground at that point in time.
But dora's husband was cooperative
In the investigation.
♪ ♪
- David immediately volunteers his dna and fingerprints.
Detectives turn their attention to dora's friends.
- She had one particular friend who said that
Dora was going on telephone chatrooms
And she was flirting with guys.
- The chatroom was called new york donut.
It was like a party-type atmosphere over the phone,
Maybe giving people that safety
That comes with anonymity
And also gives you the idea of whether or not you want to
Take it a step further and meet them in person.
- The telephone chatrooms, they were brand new.
I don't think that people really, truly understood
The depth of the danger back then.
The night that dora was killed,
She told a friend that she was going on the chatroom,
And that she had met a guy and that she wanted to meet him.
She didn't go into specifics.
There was a certain privacy going on there.
Her friend told her, "be careful."
There is a possibility that she met this man
In a chatroom that night
And he killed her.
[dramatic music]
[radio distorting]
- Coming up...
- In both cases, you had ligature strangulation.
- Both with a sexual element,
Both with a secondary weapon.
This is alarm bells going off.
He's gonna kill more girls.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- On December 2nd, 2000,
19-year-old dora almontaser has been found murdered,
Naked and strangled on her bed.
We just learned that the night she was killed,
She may have been planning to meet a man
She met on a dating phone line.
♪ ♪
- We were very interested in who that guy is.
♪ ♪
- If dora is communicating with somebody
Through this chatroom,
You're gonna need to do some phone record searching.
There was an extensive search of phone records
But they did not lead to a suspect.
- We were unable to determine who she was talking to,
Who she agreed to meet.
It could have been anybody at that point.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Then lab results start coming back.
- Dora's husband's fingerprints were compared to
The fingerprint on the telephone.
It was not his fingerprint.
And it didn't generate any other hits.
- The dna evidence from the rape kit
Did not match anybody in the database.
- The dna from the husband also was not a match.
But we had a definite profile
Of a definite specific individual.
That person might be our killer.
- With david ruled out and no hits on forensic evidence,
One month later, detectives have run out of leads.
- Somebody killed one of your kids
And they don't know who it is?
I didn't want to eat.
I didn't want to take a bath.
I didn't want nothing. I wanted to die.
So I went to the church and the priest opened the door.
And I said, my daughter had gotten killed,
And I need help.
So I saw the father every day,
And I started eating.
Little by little, little by little, little by little.
[emotional music]
- As the months roll by,
Detectives canvass dora's neighbors,
Re-interview all her friends,
And track every lead.
But all they find are dead ends.
And new cases get picked up.
- The investigators that were
Primarily assigned to that case
Have to go back to catching new cases.
- You get a little break, you go back to your old homicides.
And you keep on working every homicide that you have
When you can.
Every homicide remains open.
We don't close homicides.
[ominous music]
- Despite all the best efforts,
Five years pass with no breaks in the case.
Then, 12 miles north of where dora was killed,
A motorist driving along
The sprain brook parkway in yonkers
Contacts police with a troubling discovery.
- The person drove by, saw something unusual,
Which appeared to be
Either a carpet or a blanket rolled up.
[sinister music]
He figured, let me contact the authorities
And have them check on it.
♪ ♪
There was a female wrapped inside this blanket.
- She had obvious signs of ligature marks around her neck.
And she was bound by her hands and feet.
- The victim was wearing clothing.
She did not have any identification on her.
- She had obvious signs of scratches
On her arms and hands,
Which, to us, is a sign that
She was fighting for her life.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- There were injuries that were indicative of
Hammer blows on her body.
♪ ♪
- Ultimately, the autopsy results were that
The cause of death was strangulation with ligature.
They found the dna, blood, and semen of the perpetrator
Under her fingernails, on the sheet, and on her body.
Based on dna evidence, it was a sexual assault.
- We hope at that point that it's in the system.
Otherwise, we're basically at square one.
- They identified the victim through fingerprints.
♪ ♪
We identified her as angel serbay.
She was a 25-year-old female
From the nodine hill area of yonkers, new york.
We then notified her friends and family.
- Angel was a very loving, caring person.
She was silly.
She was friendly.
We lived in yonkers, new york.
We were always together.
It was the trio; me, her, and my cousin.
- Angel was kind of like the mother out of the three of us.
She always had, like, a nurturing way about herself.
But around the age of 19, I saw her doing things--
You know, drinking-- and she wasn't in a good place.
- She went through a depression.
She was living over there in the nodine hill area.
I was shocked because
You have your drug addicts all over.
To me, it looks like "the walking dead" over there.
It goes back to her mental health.
Maybe she thought that's where she fit in.
♪ ♪
- We submit the suspect dna profile
Retrieved from under angel's fingernails into the system
And get a surprising breakthrough.
- It turned out that that dna profile was
A direct match to the dna profile from the dora case.
And it was the same person who had intimate contact
With both of these women.
♪ ♪
- Coming up...
- In both cases, you had ligature strangulation.
- Both with a sexual element.
If you've found two killings,
There's probably five or six that you haven't found.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- After a labyrinth of dead ends,
Dna recovered from the 2005 murder
Of angel serbay in yonkers matches dna from
The bronx murder of dora almontaser
Five years earlier,
Leading authorities to believe it's the same killer.
[dramatic music]
- So in both cases, you had ligature strangulation.
♪ ♪
- Both with a sexual element,
Both with a secondary weapon.
- And then you had dna deposited from
The same suspects.
- The parallels between the murders of dora and angel
Lead detectives to consider a frightening prospect.
- The first thing I thought at that point was
A possible serial killer.
- In most serial killers,
If you've found two killings,
There's probably five or six that you haven't found.
This is alarm bells going off.
He's gonna kill more girls.
♪ ♪
- Investigators collaborate across jurisdictions
Seeking a common thread between angel and dora.
- Right away, we contacted the bronx homicide detectives
To see if there was any type of connection.
- What was the common ground between these two women?
Were they both going on chatrooms?
Did they both know the same people?
Is there a person who's connected to
Both of these people in some manner?
What's the social connection? There's gotta be something.
But the other element is the lifestyles of
These two young women were quite different.
♪ ♪
A great amount of effort was done to determine
What the connection was between these two women.
And there was nothing found at that time.
♪ ♪
It's tough not to get anywhere on any homicide case.
If you're determined, you don't give up,
But there are other homicides that are coming in.
[somber music]
- Years pass,
And while we continue to keep the cases
On our radar searching for leads,
We had no answers for the families.
- I would pray every night.
Please, god, please, god,
Let them catch this killer before he kills anybody else.
- To be honest, I felt like I lost hope.
Maybe they're never gonna catch him.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- We at the nypd never forget a homicide.
And 12 years later,
New york state investigator eugene donnelly
Decides it's time to take a fresh look at both cases.
- It was just a case that caught my eye.
You're talking about a 25-year-old victim
And a 19-year-old victim that their lives were cut short.
♪ ♪
So March of 2017, I reached out to detective malcolm reiman
Of the bronx homicide
To see if we can get the cases reignited again.
We created this serial killer task force
Because we believed that we had a serial killer on our hands.
All the characteristics fit.
- Other people who are as relentless as I am;
You don't want the guy who's eating cheez doodles
And watching the yankee game.
You want the guy who's gonna tear things apart
Until he gets where he needs to go.
We had a four-man serial killer task force formed.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- It is important to take a look at what evidence,
Forensic and otherwise, was collected at the time.
Where is that evidence now?
Is it possible that it can be processed again
Or compared again?
- I call up everybody.
We want to talk to the family. We want to talk to the friends.
We want to look at everything. We want to look at everybody.
We want to grab that evidence.
Technology has advanced in 17 years.
We want everything looked at again.
- That's when we discovered the latent print.
♪ ♪
That was recovered from a phone receiver from dora's murder.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- So they recovered a latent print
Just on the phone receiver.
There's no age on prints.
They can stay there multiple years
If not disturbed.
But quality of that print was very good.
More likely, it's the last person that--
That touched the phone receiver.
- One thing that people don't understand
With these old cases,
A fingerprint doesn't just pop one day in the system
And say, "hey, this is the guy."
You have to have somebody go and retrieve
That latent print file and run it through the system.
- 17 years after not receiving a match,
Detective connelly runs the print
Through the databases again
To see if any new prints have been added since then.
♪ ♪
- The database would bring you back candidates.
So one of the prints that I looked at
Looked pretty good on the screen.
And then I would bring it to my desk,
And the old school way--
And I was wowed
That it was a match.
100%.
- It was...Stunning.
Absolutely stunning.
Now we had a name.
17 years it took to get a name, and now we had it.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- The newly-formed serial killer task force
Has scored a massive break in the murders of
Dora almontaser and angel serbay:
A possible suspect.
- I remember that day pretty vividly.
I was home and detective connelly called me
Regarding the fingerprint.
- 17 years it took.
Now we had a name to go with that print,
And the name was christopher gonzalez.
♪ ♪
- I ran a couple of computer checks.
And the first thing that
Literally jumped off the screen to me was that
He lived in the bronx in close proximity
To dora's crime scene in 2000,
And in 2005,
He lived right where angel serbay lived.
So right there, that's a pretty big clue.
- Christopher gonzalez is 36 years old.
His prints were entered into the system
From a traffic stop in 2005.
- Mr. Gonzalez had a forged plate on his car,
Got pulled over in the bronx, and got arrested.
His fingerprint remained in the system.
- A little slip-up,
Which was a big deal.
- We determined christopher gonzalez was
Down in naples, florida in collier county.
- We checked his criminal history,
His employment history,
And any other database that we could find.
- We knew that in 2017,
Christopher gonzalez was married.
He was living a quiet life in florida.
He was under the radar of the police.
And another frightening element was discovered;
He's working at a toy store.
He's working at a toys "r" us.
He was living right on the edge of the everglades,
Alligator-infested swampland
Where a body can disappear and never be found.
If he's down there killing girls,
They'll just be missing persons.
[frantic string music]
We want to get his dna.
We want to determine if it's his semen
That's in both of these girls.
- The four investigators, we put our heads together
To try to figure out,
How are we gonna be able to collect
Some dna from this person?
He's not at the stage yet where we're comfortable
Bringing him in and interviewing him.
And also, if gonzalez,
He sees that detectives from new york are in his area,
Is that gonna trigger him?
Is he going to try to flee?
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- As the team bears down on gonzalez,
They want evidence beyond the dna match,
Which, on its own, only proves
The suspect had sex with both victims.
For proof that gonzalez is the murderer,
Detective reiman needs to find one thing.
- The murder weapon, I wanted to do touch dna on that cord
From dora's murder.
There wasn't really any touch dna in 2000,
Whereas in 2017, there was.
- If christopher's dna was subsequently found
To be on the phone cord, that would convince anyone
That not only did he have sex with dora,
But he is the one that killed her.
- But there's a problem.
The evidence has been in storage for almost 20 years.
- To find that evidence would be a victory in and of itself.
- I had a fantastic guy,
Sergeant tom o'connor.
He'd go look himself.
He'd take off his uniform shirt
And go down in a t-shirt
And he'd be covered with dust and mold and spider webs,
Pulling down boxes, opening up drums.
He's relentless.
He's not gonna stop until he does find them.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
There are vast warehouses.
It looks like "raiders of the lost ark."
But tom went down and got the job done.
♪ ♪
We found it.
Now we had it.
It was an incredible moment.
- The murder weapon phone cord is sent to the lab
For touch dna testing.
The task force now needs a way
To get gonzalez's dna from him in florida
To see if it matches.
- Our next step was to reach out to
The police department from collier county, florida
And ask for their assistance in helping us do this.
- We'd have to go down to florida
And see what we could do about getting his dna.
- The state police, at our request,
At several times, they had followed him
Just to try to determine his day-to-day activities.
Christopher didn't have a driver's license.
However, he was driving regularly.
That's a crime.
If they saw him driving, collier county was going to
Stop him and take him into custody.
And we hoped to obtain an abandonment sample
Through that process.
The police officers were gonna use flex cuffs.
It's like a large zip tie.
As you pull tighter,
It tightens down on the person's wrists.
We had hoped to get some skin cells from christopher
That would get a viable dna sample.
- Investigators will also swab one other location
For christopher's dna.
Police cars obviously see
A great variety of human fluids, to put it gently.
It would not be conducive to get an exact profile.
But they had a brand-new, never-used,
Marked police car from the sheriff's department.
If he drove, he would be arrested,
He'd be placed into that brand-new, untouched car
For dna collection.
- The four primary investigators,
Detective reiman, myself,
Gene donnelly, and don wynn,
Flew down to florida together.
[engines whooshing]
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
We got a phone call from his surveillance team.
Right then, christopher was behind the wheel of the car.
What did we want them to do?
The determination was made,
"well, take him into custody right now."
[police siren blaring]
- A uniformed police officer pulled him over,
Placed him under arrest,
And he is placed into the flex cuffs
And into the back of the police car.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
He's brought into the station house
To process his arrest.
- The task force remains hidden from sight,
Not wanting christopher to know
New york law enforcement is tracking him.
♪ ♪
- We worked with collier county to take possession of the--
The flex cuffs and the swabs that were taken from
The inside of their police car.
And we had them brought back up to new york
So that our lab could process them for dna.
♪ ♪
- The dna results come back
And the task force is stunned.
- It was like getting punched in the gut.
I couldn't believe it.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Detectives just received the result
Of their attempts to secretly obtain dna
From prime suspect christopher gonzalez.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- There was not enough genetic material recovered
To give a viable dna profile.
♪ ♪
- He's out there by alligator alley
And here we are without a dna profile.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[police siren wailing]
- We do have circumstantial evidence
Linking gonzalez to the murders,
But the bronx da says we need
Something more substantial before arresting him.
- We had to determine if
We were comfortable enough with where we were
That we were gonna arrest him.
He could ask for a lawyer and then we're shut down.
- So we decide to head back down to florida
To see if we can get gonzalez to confess.
To keep him open to answering questions,
Florida police will arrest gonzalez
For driving without a license.
It's not until he's in custody that the nypd will appear
And ask him about dora and angel's murders.
- Not long after we got there,
He was driving again,
Still did not have a driver's license.
The determination was made to take him into custody.
[door opens]
- How you doing? - Good.
- We went in and very clearly just introduced ourselves
As detectives from new york.
- Are you willing to answer questions?
- Yeah, I mean-- - ok.
- I don't have a problem with that.
- Our initial approach was just trying to confirm our timeline
Of where he was at the time dora is killed,
And then in 2005 when angel serbay was killed.
At first, he's polite, he's compliant.
- You remember where you lived after davidson?
- Um, I moved to yonkers.
I lived in yonkers for a while,
Then back to the bronx, lived by castle hill.
- Knowing christopher's fingerprint was found
On dora's phone, placing him in the apartment
Where she was murdered,
Police ask gonzalez about dora.
- That building is 1186 east 180.
It's right by the transit facility
Over there by morris--
- The train? - Yeah.
You recognize that building?
- No, I can't say I do but I know the area.
I know where the train is on 180th.
- You know this girl?
- Can't say that I do.
- Her name is dora.
- Doesn't ring a bell.
- Because of the fingerprint,
We know that that's a lie.
And that's huge.
His credibility is pretty much shot at that point.
- His demeanor did begin to change.
It became obvious to us that some of the answers
That he was giving to us were not truthful.
- This is far from the bronx, you underst--
You know we're far from there now, right?
Obviously, you live here.
So for us to come down here,
We're not picking you at random.
- I--I know, and apparently, it's something serious.
- Yeah.
- Detective reiman shows gonzalez a crime scene photo
From dora's murder.
- She was actually strangled
With this telephone cord right here.
You don't know what happened to this girl?
You weren't in this apartment? - No, sir.
- Is there any possibility that you touched any of this stuff
Or had contact with any of this stuff, the telephone cord?
- I wasn't there, so,
I can't touch anything if I'm not present.
- Ok.
- Here we go again.
- When angel serbay was brought up,
He got a little nervous
And realized where this interview was going.
- This is just going somewhere south.
- We're just asking you questions.
- Oh, I--I know,
But it's like it's a little too much.
- Do you recognize her?
- I've seen her on the streets.
In yonkers.
- She lived right next to you.
- Oh, I didn't know where she lives.
I've just seen her on the streets.
- Something that upsets you about it?
- No, not anything that upsets me.
♪ ♪
- Then detectives show gonzalez a photo of
Something they believed belonged to him.
- You ever seen that sheet before?
♪ ♪
- Ok, um--all right, that's it.
- And at that point, he lawyered up.
- Ok, all right, so then I would like to
Have a lawyer present.
Is that ok with you guys?
- Mr. Gonzalez gave us a series of denials,
Such as, "I was never in that building."
"I was never in that apartment."
"I didn't know that girl."
"I never touched that girl."
- In cases like these, sometimes the outright denial
Is just as good as a confession...
Because those were lies that we could disprove.
- We were able to get grounds for an arrest warrant
And a warrant to swab him for dna.
♪ ♪
- The task force returns to new york
And christopher's dna is submitted for comparison
To both angel and dora's rape kits
And on the phone cord that dora was strangled with.
Three weeks later, detective reiman gets a message
From the lab.
- On December 2nd,
17 years to the day of the murder of dora,
I got the result that it was a hit.
We got a hit on the dna on that rape kit.
And it turned out, we got a hit on that telephone cord
That was used to kill her, too.
So he not only had his fingerprint on that telephone,
He had his dna on that cord that was used
To strangle her to death.
He was a match.
That was dora reaching out to me.
[line ringing]
- My cell phone rings, and detective malcolm,
He said, "I got good news for you."
He said, "we've caught your daughter's killer."
I said, "what?" I said, "oh, my goodness, wow."
Oh, brother.
That was the happiest day of my life.
All that suffering that I went through in my life,
All these years, now it's time for him to suffer now.
Now it's time for him now.
- Gonzalez never explained how he encountered
And murdered either angel or dora.
Detective reiman recounts what likely occurred
In dora's case based on the evidence.
- It would appear that christopher gonzalez
Met dora on the chat line.
He charmed her enough to come up to her apartment,
And probably took that knife
And sexually attacked her,
And then strangled her to death, and left her there.
♪ ♪
- Investigators also want to charge gonzalez
With angel's murder, but there's a roadblock.
The dna match only proves that
Christopher had intimate contact with angel,
Not that he killed her.
- I contacted the westchester county
District attorney's office.
They determined that we needed to do some more work
On this case.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[sirens blaring]
- Christopher gonzalez is charged with
The murder of dora almontaser.
But in order to also charge him
For murdering angel serbay,
The westchester da asked the task force
For more evidence.
- We were disappointed, but we didn't lose hope.
We knew that we had to go back and try it again.
We were able to identify christopher's ex-girlfriends.
One ex-girlfriend, when we went there and met her,
We told her that we were there for christopher gonzalez.
And she said, in a joking manner,
"what did he do, kill somebody?"
And when we told her that we were there
Because of that reason, she immediately broke down
And told us that she was afraid for her life.
And she said he tortured her.
He would tell her he had murdered somebody in the past
And that he would do the same if she left him.
♪ ♪
During the time that angel was murdered,
Another female that christopher dated,
In the beginning of September 2005,
She received a call from him stating that he needed her.
She went to his apartment,
Noticed that he had scratch marks on his arms and face,
That his apartment was in disarray,
And that the sheets were missing from the bed.
She was shown a picture of the sheets
That angel was wrapped in
And was able to identify those sheets
As belonging to christopher gonzalez.
♪ ♪
The lab determined that there was an unknown female's dna
Located on those sheets.
Another girlfriend agreed to voluntarily provide her dna
For comparison.
It was her dna on christopher gonzalez's sheets,
Which would lead us to believe that
Christopher was the person, indeed, that murdered angel.
- With his dna matched to both murders,
And beaten by the overwhelming evidence against him,
Christopher gonzalez is offered a plea deal
For each case.
- The families in this case had endured years of trauma.
No matter how good your case is,
It's in the hands of a jury in the end.
I was in communication with the westchester da,
And together, we decided that
Taking the plea on both of the cases
Was the appropriate thing to do.
And the family didn't have to endure that whole experience.
- Whenever you're bringing a murder case to trial,
You're rolling the dice that you get a conviction
Or the killer back out on the street.
So it was the right decision, and it was done well.
- So do you admit that in the county of westchester,
State of new york,
You did cause the death of angel serbay?
- You now plead guilty of that charge?
- Christopher gonzalez was convicted of murdering
Dora almontaser and angel serbay.
He pled guilty to both counts
And was sentenced to 20 years to life for each crime
To run concurrently.
- Christopher, you left not one,
But two families destroyed.
But believe me, I will be angel and dora's voice.
I will make sure I am at every parole hearing and court date.
Wherever you are, I will be pleading
That they keep you behind bars.
- I'm so grateful to the detectives.
But they should have just, like,
Given him the death penalty.
- How does it feel? - It feels great.
It's about time, you know, he gets what he deserve.
I'm happy with the decision that they made.
And my main thing was my mom.
I was always worried, like, oh, man, if we go to trial,
How she's gonna take it.
I think god did what he had to do.
- I said, "oh, wow."
I said, "oh, thank you very much."
I'm happy he got caught. I'm happy he got caught.
- I never thought that my childhood friend
Would be murdered like this.
- These people are in terrible pain
For the rest of their lives
And that's who we work for.
We not only work for that dead person,
To give that dead person justice,
But also the people who are left behind
That are still experiencing this pain.
- Even though it don't bring her back to life,
It doesn't bring her back to life.
But I was happy. You know why?
Because that way, he won't kill nobody else.
That's it.
[gentle music]
Dora was a very friendly person.
She was a very loving person.
She was my daughter. I miss her.
♪ ♪