[drill buzzing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Matthew] I knew something was wrong.
Something happened to her.
Her killer thought he was gonna get away with it.
[Dean] He formulated a plan.
Like some sort of Vegas magic act,
he made the body disappear.
[Pamela] It's like finding a needle in a haystack.
There's such a vast expanse of where it could be.
[Parker] No one would have believed
that anyone would have gone to such lengths...
to hide a body.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dean] On May 31st, 2019,
Esmeralda Gonzalez was reported missing
to the Las Vegas metropolitan police department.
Esmeralda was last seen by her family
on May 26th, 2019.
After two days,
her brother responded to Esmeralda's address
to check up on her.
When he got there,
he found her not there.
Her brother called me and told me that she's missing.
I was in denial.
Esmeralda was a very driven young woman.
She was born in Mexico
and she came to Las Vegas at a very young age.
And she was able to finish up college,
she bought her first house,
she ended up buying a second house
and turned it into a rental property.
She became Instagram famous.
She had thousands and thousands of followers.
Why would this girl, who is 100% independent, go missing?
And I knew something was wrong.
[somber music playing]
[Pamela] Her family told us...
Esmeralda was living in a pretty nice neighborhood
and making pretty good money.
But we found she suffered from mental health problems.
When she was on her medication,
she was fine.
But if the medication
stopped working for her,
then she would have episodes.
[Matthew] A week before she went missing,
her brother called me and he told me
that her mental disorder is acting up again
and something's going on with her medicine.
[Cinthia] My news assignment editor
said there's this report of a missing Latina.
She was in a very, very fragile state of mind.
To me, it hit home a little more
for the simple fact that her parents had come
to the United States
for the same reason my parents came here.
Her family just wanted a better life.
That just makes you feel sick to your stomach.
[Matthew] "What was her mental state?"
is, uh, the reason why something happened to her.
I didn't know how to react.
It was all like a complete mystery
what really happened.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Pamela] For me, all cases are kind of like a puzzle.
When the police detectives
first came and spoke to us about the case,
they described it as a missing persons case.
But there's no indication,
really, that anything criminal has happened to her.
[Dean] We went to Esmeralda's house
to see if the disappearance was a result of something
that happened there.
[Pamela] There wasn't a lot of disturbance at her house.
But she left her phone,
her car was there.
[Dean] We did find that she had video cameras
on her door and within the house as well.
And we're able to obtain video footage from the cameras
in Esmeralda's house.
[doorbell rings]
[Dean] This video footage shows her behavior
around her house in the days leading up
to her disappearance.
She's acting erratic, strange.
She's heard muttering nonsense, phrases...
and jumping at nothing.
[Esmeralda yells]
You can see that Esmeralda is essentially
not in a right mind during that period of time.
Even though she's clearly having
kind of a mental breakdown.
Nothing in the house ends up helping
as far as where she went.
The fact that she left items that could be tracked.
Her cell phone,
her debit card, credit cards,
and even her vehicle at her residence,
questions also arise on whether or not
she was trying to escape from someone.
We conducted interviews with family members
and others friends that showed that Esmeralda
had a boyfriend, John.
[Matthew] Last time that I'd seen her
six to eight weeks before she went missing,
I went to her house and she instantly stopped me
and she said, "You cannot come in here.
I have a new man.
He's extremely jealous. He's controlling.
He watches my cameras.
He doesn't want you around here."
I was like, "This is very odd."
We look into John to see what his criminal history was,
and discovered that there had been a report
of a domestic dispute
between Esmeralda and John on the 29th of May.
She is ultimately reported as missing on the 31st.
So we become concerned.
[drill buzzing]
[Parker] John ends up being rather forthcoming
with information and his own whereabouts.
He turns over a cell phone.
He allows detectives to essentially
go through social media.
Stuff like that.
[Dean] We used cell phone records
with location data to determine that John
was not with Esmeralda since May 29th
in the days leading up to her disappearance.
[Parker] At that point in time,
we don't have enough to move on John.
[eerie music playing]
[Dean] The Missing Persons Unit
then did a canvas of the neighborhood
where Esmeralda lived.
They contacted several neighbors.
A lot of people have ring doorbells
that capture video not only at their front porch
or sometimes even out in the front yard or the street.
[Parker] One of the neighbors says,
"Oh, hey, I have video footage
of a girl knocking on my door."
[Dean] We did retrieve that security footage.
They're kind of taken aback.
The video footage showed Esmeralda dressed
in her lingerie and high heels.
She appears very confused.
When a person is reported missing
and you know that they have a history of mental illness,
then we do become concerned about their welfare.
[doorbell rings]
The fear would be that
they could become a danger to themselves
or a danger to someone else in the community.
The longer a missing person goes missing,
the colder the case gets,
the harder it is to put things together.
[dog barking]
[Dean] Now we have a question,
what has happened to her?
[man speaking]
And you can see that at 2:33 a.m. timeframe
is the last time she can be seen alive
when she's walking down the street.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dean] Where did she go?
She's leaving on her own volition from her house,
but her behavior is very erratic,
and she just disappears from that moment.
We were concerned,
will this missing persons investigation
ultimately become a homicide investigation?
[tense music playing]
[Pamela] When people are missing for us
for a certain amount of time,
we assume it's gonna ultimately end
in a homicide case.
But we need a body.
Without a body, you have trouble proving
that someone's dead or that a crime has occurred.
[Parker] It's frustrating because you kind of know
that Esmeralda's family must be suffering,
and this family wants some closure.
And we can't give it
because we can't definitely say what happened.
We can't essentially tell that family to give up hope.
[Matthew] The hardest part is just not knowing
what really happened.
I was afraid somebody was doing harm to her.
And then you're just searching all over town,
going everywhere that you know that she normally goes.
Where she gets her nails done,
the gas station.
Is all her friends and family.
You're going everywhere you can think that she possibly went to,
putting flyers up all over town.
[Dean] Then approximately six weeks later
on July 18th, 2019,
Metro PD's homicide unit
receives an anonymous tip via a phone call.
The information in the anonymous tip
was that a prostitute came to be in the company
of a person called Christopher Prestipino
and that she had been held against her will
for a couple days and was ultimately murdered
by Christopher Prestipino.
[Parker] We had doubts about whether or not
Esmeralda is the girl that was discussed in the...
In the tip.
However, that gets me interested.
This was the first real significant break in the...
This investigation.
And the investigation has turned upside-down.
There was investigation done
into what was going on in Esmeralda's social life,
given that she was a social media influencer.
[Pamela] But we learned she had ties
to quasi-adult entertainment.
[Matthew] She worked as one of those showgirls
on the strip where you wear the feathers
and you take pictures with tourists.
And I told her that it was not safe.
Like you're... You don't have security,
you're vulnerable.
So she agreed that she would work
at a gentleman's club.
And she worked, worked, worked, and worked
and saved every penny she possibly could
and that's why she was able to be successful
and invest in real estate.
There were definitely adult entertainment
aspects of her life,
kind of loosely fitting
what the anonymous tipster had said.
So, it seemed like a pretty valid tip,
but for us as prosecutors,
we need a crime scene or we need a body.
I mean, we need something to go on
if we're gonna charge a homicide
much more than this person is missing.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Dean] The first thing done with this information
is try to identify the person named in the tip.
In this case, they were able to identify
Christopher Prestipino
because his last name is very unusual.
[Parker] We learned that Christopher worked
here in Las Vegas.
He dealt with production lighting.
[Pamela] He was sort of a behind-the-scenes worker,
and they're able to find out that around the time
Esmeralda goes missing, he doesn't show up for work,
which is unusual for him.
[Dean] He had criminal history
involving possession and sales of narcotics.
[Cinthia] But based on what I saw on social media,
this guy was perverted.
He had so many posts,
inappropriate posts about women,
things he would do to women.
I remember seeing that he liked a lot
of like nasty groups on Facebook.
He's a sicko walking around in our community.
He's a predator.
[Matthew] I never met him, this guy,
but there's so many thoughts going through your mind.
You can't help but to think like,
"Are these things connected?"
[Pamela] Was there some connection
between Esmeralda Gonzalez and Christopher Prestipino?
[tense music playing]
[Dean] Detectives were looking for a connection
between Esmeralda Gonzalez
and Christopher Prestipino.
We map out Esmeralda's address
and Christopher's address and find
that they're less than one-tenth of a mile apart.
The street that Prestipino's cul-de-sac empties out onto
is in fact the same street
that Esmeralda is seen walking towards
when she leaves that neighbor's house
at 2:30 a.m. on May 31st.
[Pamela] Because of the proximity
of Esmeralda Gonzalez's house
and also the... Kind of the description
of her loosely fitting
what the anonymous tipster had said,
we were able to put together that she was likely
the person in the anonymous tip.
[Dean] Up until this moment,
there's been a bunch of dead ends
in the Esmeralda Gonzalez investigation.
Now it seems that there's been
a huge break in the case.
Christopher Prestipino ends up being the suspect.
Prestipino is playing game of cat and mouse.
If you don't have a body, one of the main elements
of a human being killed,
you have to prove murder
through at least circumstantial evidence.
[Pamela] We subpoenaed Christopher's banking records
and we could see where his card was used.
We pulled the video surveillance,
you see trips to the hardware store.
The hardware purchases start occurring on June 2nd
after Esmeralda went missing.
[Pamela] All of the purchases were highly suspicious,
like a rope, and cement, and wheelbarrow,
and all these things that you would need
in order to move a body.
But all of the little pieces of evidence
is circumstantial evidence.
So it was helpful but not definitive
that a crime has occurred.
[Parker] We also learn Christopher Prestipino
does three different truck rentals
from June 8th to June 10th.
Esmeralda has reported missing on the 31st.
If Christopher Prestipino did kill Esmeralda
and did not dispose of the body
until the 10th,
that he had a long period of time
to formulate and enact a plan to dispose of that body.
[Pamela] There's like 200 miles
put on the rental truck,
but Las Vegas,
there's a lot of desert surrounding it.
There's such a vast expanse of where the remains
of Esmeralda Gonzalez could be,
but we needed to try to piece together where she was.
So it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
[Parker] If he killed Esmeralda,
I think Prestipino thinks he can outsmart detectives
because if you don't have a body,
we can't just go arrest him.
If he's playing a game of cat and mouse,
you gotta keep going.
Now, this is roughly in this August
to September time period.
We get the cell phone records of Prestipino
and a number is called really frequently
during this May 31st
to, let's say, June 10th timeframe.
And Casandra Garrett is the name of the person
who's using this other phone.
So detectives start following up on that.
[Dean] Casandra was kind of a drifter.
She lived in various places in Las Vegas,
sometimes not staying at one place too long.
Casandra's cell phone is tracked.
Sometime in the evening of June 10th,
Casandra leaves Las Vegas.
Casandra ultimately ends up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
We were really trying to get as much evidence as possible.
There's a little bit of strategy to that.
We don't wanna talk to Christopher
because then obviously he realizes
that he is being looked at for a homicide,
but we needed something.
So the detectives traveled to Milwaukee
to speak with Casandra Garrett
to see if she would talk
about anything that happened in Las Vegas.
Detectives respond to Milwaukee
to interview Casandra Garrett.
We know that Casandra
and our suspect Christopher Prestipino
were friends,
so it's very important to speak with her
to see what her involvement was.
[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
[detective speaking]
-[Casandra speaking] -[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
She basically tells them to pound sand
and doesn't really give them much to follow up on.
[Pamela] She's not too forthcoming.
So it's really challenging.
I think Christopher Prestipino was clearly involved
in Esmeralda's disappearance,
but we didn't have anything else to go on.
[Dean] But we do become concerned.
If he and Casandra begin discussing the case,
they may start covering up their crime
and disposing of the evidence.
[Pamela] We had to figure out where the crime scene is.
So we got search warrants served
in Christopher Prestipino's house
in order to find more evidence
that would substantiate a homicide
and help us find Esmeralda's body.
[somber music playing]
[Dean] This search was conducted
on September 20th.
SWAT is used in these circumstances
is because the subject matter of the investigation
is a violent act
where someone is ultimately killed.
[Pamela] When the detectives served the search warrant,
Christopher Prestipino was home
and cooperated with the police.
When the detectives showed Mr. Prestipino
a picture of Esmeralda Gonzalez
and he denied ever seeing her or ever meeting her.
So we searched his residence.
[door creaking]
[Pamela] There wasn't a whole lot of evidence
that indicated violence in the house.
There wasn't an obvious weapon,
there wasn't blood,
but there were things that suggested
that something could've happened in the house.
The garage floor was redone.
There were new carpets.
Those things would be consistent
with someone who's trying to hide evidence of a crime.
But there's no way to say
that something bad happened to her in the house.
We were concerned if we never find this body,
are we gonna be able to put a case on?
[Parker] Maybe Prestipino thinks
he can outsmart everyone,
but we didn't stop.
[somber music playing]
[Pamela] Several months into the investigation,
a witness comes forward and it was pretty big.
One of Casandra Garrett's friends
ends up talking to us.
According to the friend, Casandra had talked
about this young woman being tied up
in the house of Prestipino
for several days.
That she was drugged
and that she was prevented from leaving the house.
[Parker] And so because of that,
we decided to take another run at Casandra.
[Pamela] We told her
that if she did tell us what happened to Esmeralda,
that her liability would be lessened
if she could implicate someone else
versus having most of the responsibility laid
at her doorstep.
Casandra decided that she would cooperate
with the detective's investigation
and Casandra agreed to come back to Las Vegas
from Wisconsin on October 4th.
She admitted that she was with Christopher
when they dumped the body.
Then she led the detectives to a remote desert area,
approximately 47 miles north of Las Vegas.
[Pamela] And once they got out to that desert location,
what we found was really shocking.
[Parker] Early October, Pam and I are alerted,
hey, the body's likely been found.
It's a tomb.
And Casandra Garrett ends up being the person
who shows us where the body is in tomb
and disposed of in the middle of the desert.
It's so heavy.
A tow truck with kind of a crane gets out
in the middle of the desert.
It picks up the tomb
and it's brought back to the CSI lab
here in Las Vegas.
[Pamela] They had to drill it open
and it was a really, really heavy structure.
[Parker] They were able to find portions of bones
and there is a watch that Esmeralda was wearing
in some of her social media posts
that is in that tomb that she was buried with.
And so that's one of the initial ways
that she's identified.
But eventually, DNA confirms
that's Esmeralda's body.
It was shock,
shock but kind of awe in the sense of,
hey, someone really build this thing.
The amount of thought that it took
to essentially enclosed this into a tomb,
no one would have believed
that anyone would've gone to such lengths
to hide a body.
[reporter 1] Prosecutors suspected a body
that was recently found in the desert
is missing woman 24-year-old, Esmeralda Gonzalez.
[reporter 2] Detectives located it in the desert,
encased in a homemade concrete
and a wooden structure.
[Matthew] I just remember when her friend called me
and told me if they ended up killing her,
I was actually mentally prepared for it
when they did find her.
The story was, it was all over the news,
like you couldn't even get away from it.
I try not to hear all the details.
If I hear the details,
like I can imagine exactly how she would react.
And that type of thought
just kind of, like, sticks in your mind,
so I just try not to hear the specifics.
I was in complete shock.
[Parker] So that's the point in time when you can go forward
with an arrest warrant for Christopher Prestipino.
Detectives become aware that he's gonna fly back
from vacation on this flight.
It's gonna land here in McCarran Airport.
I'm at the airport with the detectives.
Detectives circle around him,
hook him under each arm.
We say we found the body.
Prestipino goes limp
and, kind of, collapses
into the arms of the detectives.
[Pamela] He is arrested at that point,
but he obtained counsel and he refused to talk.
It's then that Casandra lays out actually
what occurred on May 31st
in those early morning hours.
[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
[Dean] Casandra said she and Christopher
were at Christopher's house the night
of May 30th
into the morning of May 31st.
Esmeralda is in lingerie walking down the street.
That street leads real close
to Christopher Prestipino's house.
[woman] She was walking around knocking on people's doors,
and this guy took advantage of the situation.
Esmeralda was having a mental health episode,
but I think he probably thought we can party
with her and have sex with her.
[Casandra speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
Christopher appears to become kind of paranoid.
[Casandra speaking]
[Dean] So they make the determination to kill her.
He starts beating on Esmeralda
and chokes her out.
[Casandra speaking]
[detective speaking]
[Casandra speaking]
Christopher then injects Esmeralda with muriatic acid,
which is used in cleaning swimming pools,
which ultimately kills Esmeralda.
And he's trying to use that
to throw the investigators off the scent
in the disposal of the body.
[Parker] Christopher then built an entire tomb
full of concrete
with various screws and jacks.
He actually entombs that body.
Ultimately, Christopher and Casandra
drove the rented moving truck
with the concrete in the back
to an area approximately 47 miles north of Las Vegas
and were able to dump
the complete structure, wood, concrete, and all
out of the back of the truck into a remote desert area.
There's like a point of really dehumanizing someone,
but it's really shocking I think to know,
like literally what he had to do to accomplish this,
like moving a young woman's body,
just pouring cement on
with the hopes that no one ever finds her.
I think Prestipino does everything in his power
to just kind of erase her.
[Parker] If not for how aggressive we were
at continuing to follow up
and the investigation
going through the various search warrants,
the social media
and the cell phone mapping,
this probably would never have been solved.
[Pamela] For Casandra Garrett,
we felt like we had to give her some credit
or some benefit for assisting
with locating the body.
And so she got a 20-year sentence
with parole eligibility after eight years.
[Parker] Christopher Prestipino eventually pleads
to second degree murder and first degree kidnapping
and receives a sentence of 10 to 25 years...
combined.
It's really shocking, I think, to know
like literally what he had to do to accomplish this
with the hopes that no one ever finds her.
That's pretty dark to be able to do that.
I've prosecuted homicides for 20 years
and the thing that I always think about
in this case
is how she's preyed upon
when she's in this really vulnerable state.
So that's always the part for me
that makes it really sad.
[Matthew] Her brother called me
to come get her dog Bonita.
As soon as I picked her up, she stayed by my side.
She was my emotional support animal.
So she traveled with me,
I took care of her for quite a while.
And she went
to Esmeralda's funeral with me and everything.
I put her down October
of 2021.
So until this day she... Her ashes are next
to her mom's ashes in her room.
It doesn't make sense to me.
Literally, you could've just let her go
and said she's not mentally well.
Why did you have to kill her?
[ominous music playing]
This case is Dracula meets The Sons of Anarchy .
I've never seen anybody go to this length to dispose
of a body.
At that point we had got a ladder, and I went down.
We were thinking, is Keith down there?