115 - Karla Rodriguez Flashback

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Shaun Carla Rodriguez, who her family called Carlita, was like any other seven year old little girl living here in the Las Vegas Valley in the late nineteen nineties. Her parents moved here to give their kids a better life and to pursue more opportunities.

John Carla disappeared on the evening of Wednesday, October twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, and hasn't been seen since. But her family has never given up hope that she's out there somewhere, that she had the opportunity to grow up somehow.

Shaun Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence as well as unsolved cases and missing persons. I'm your host, Sean, and with me, as always, is the one and only John.

John I am the only John in the room.

Shaun As we said before, this case involves a typical little girl living life in the nineteen nineties. Carla Rodriguez was born in Michoacan, Mexico, to her parents, Elia Zepeda and Ramon Rodriguez, on September twenty nine, nineteen ninety two. She was the youngest of four girls, the oldest being Rosie Rodriguez, who was about eight years older than her. Carla was an active and outdoorsy, adventurous and fun kid. She had her share of health problems, including an appendectomy and being prone to kidney and urinary tract infections, but none of that slowed her down. She loved hanging out with her friends, riding her bike and exploring the area where the family lived just a few short blocks from the stratosphere.

John On that fateful day, October twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Carla's mom, Elia, walked her halfway to John S Park Elementary School at nine thirty one Franklin Ave around seven a m that school is still there today with the same name, and it's just a quick walk from the family's home. After school, she was out in the neighborhood, as she often was playing with friends around the seven hundred block of Bonita Avenue, northeast of the intersection of Saint Louis and Sixth Avenue around seven p m, which was after dark that late in October in Las Vegas. She went over to a particularly good friend and playmates house, rang the bell and asked if she could come out and play. Her parents told her that it was too late and Carla should just go home. She played in their front yard on the swingset for about fifteen minutes, they said, and then left. Another friend claimed to have given her money to go to the store, but that one's hard to verify and there was no security footage of any store near there that she might have gone to. Unfortunately, this is where the trail ends. There are no confirmed sightings of Carla after that. It was as if she had just vanished.

Shaun Carla's mom and dad both worked, and unfortunately, they worked opposite shifts. Ramon came home after his shift, and of course, Carla wasn't there. He knew she'd often be out playing with friends or even staying over at a friend's house, so he wasn't extremely worried. Carla's mom didn't get home until three a m from her work, and Ramon didn't mention to her that Carla wasn't at home. In the months and years that followed, police and armchair sleuths have made a lot of this fact, occasionally with a pretty victim blaming tone. The fact is, though, that it wasn't that unusual. And speaking as the oldest of four girls, it's not unusual to ask the older siblings to help keep an eye on the younger ones. It was the next morning when Elliot woke up and found Carla not at home, and she was pretty concerned. She headed over to John S Park Elementary and talked to the principal. And it was that principal who first called the police. That's another thing that people make a lot of phrasing it. Like her parents didn't call the police, but of course they did start looking right away. And the police were called that next morning. To their credit, Metro set up a command centre at the school right away. They started searching the area and located her bike near that neighbor's home.

John The police recognized when the call came in that they had already lost a lot of precious time trying to find Carla. Officers repeatedly said to the news outlets that the first six to twelve hours after a child's disappearance is the most critical time to begin a search, because if they've been abducted in a car twelve hours later, there's no knowing where they might be. They could be four hundred miles away in any direction. Amber alerts are dependent on quickly informing the public and getting as many people looking in the community as possible before an abducted child is too far away. The Amber alert system began in nineteen ninety six, when Dallas Fort Worth broadcasters and local police developed an early warning system for abducted children. The system was inspired by the story of Amber Hagerman, who was abducted in Arlington, Texas, in nineteen ninety six. Diana Simone, a radio station employee, came up with the idea of having local radio stations alert the public when a child abduction occurs in the community so they can send in tips to law enforcement. In two thousand and three, President George W Bush signed the Protect act into law, which provided the emergency preparedness and response tools necessary to create a national Amber alert program. In two thousand and two, the system became nationally focused after the first white House Conference on Missing, Exploited and Runaway Children. The Amber alert system has spread to countries throughout the world, and is responsible for the rescue of over nine hundred children as of twenty twenty two. Texas has the most Amber alerts, with seventeen percent of all Amber alerts issued in the US coming from Texas. Unfortunately, as far as we can tell, since Amber alerts were so new, we can't even confirm there was one issued for Carla. Police started searching her neighborhood. They went door to door asking neighbors for information if they had seen Carla, if they had seen anything or anyone suspicious in the neighborhood, and so on. They concentrated on the area bordered by Saint Louis, Sahara, Industrial and Spencer Streets. Police also use bloodhounds named Blossom and Barney to try to track Khalaf's scent. They led police to a nearby apartment complex, but no items or evidence of value were found there, although they did find some fairly sketchy but apparently unrelated individuals, according to the FBI. The dogs hit on a particular apartment and even a bathroom within the apartment where they found human blood. The bathroom had been recently disinfected while the rest of the house was in complete disarray. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough blood to build a DNA profile given the technology of the day, and there were no further hits on Carla's scent on those individuals vehicles. Although the FBI believes the two individuals were sex offenders, as far as we know, a case against them was never pursued. The police wanted to make sure they talked to every person they could. They set up roadblocks to stop passing motorists. They went back through neighborhoods several times, just in case someone had been away on vacation, or hadn't yet heard the news that Carla was missing. Strangely, though, years later a neighbor mentioned to the news media that through all of this intensive searching, they were completely unaware of Carla being missing. That sort of reminds me how we talked in the Shawna TFA bonus episode that Shawna lived two doors down from me, but I was never interviewed about her murder.

Shaun We have talked about this before, and many journalists, advocates, and ethical true crime content creators have pointed this out in the past. It is sadly not uncommon for criminal justice agencies or the media to focus on crime victims that fit certain demographics. There was speculation in Carla's case that perhaps if Carla had been a white child, maybe she would have gotten more attention. But I don't think we have evidence here at all that Las Vegas Metro Police or the Las Vegas Review-Journal or the Las Vegas Sun were ignoring Carla or not covering her case enough. The evidence we have here seems to indicate the opposite. More than one hundred officers and volunteers searched for a week, repeatedly going through the neighborhoods with flyers. Hundreds of fliers were distributed. Police searched abandoned cars, abandoned lots, empty hotel and motel rooms. They used their mounted police unit to search and ditches and washes for any trace of Carla. Detectives tried many avenues to raise awareness about her disappearance. Her face was printed on Sedona. Drinking water bottles and fliers were mailed out with her photo. Those. Have you seen me? Mailers I'm sure many of us are familiar with. On the Saturday night after she disappeared, Carla's disappearance was even featured on America's Most Wanted, and her story was covered by The Montel Williams Show during the September two thousand Southwest Series NASCAR event at the Las Vegas Speedway. Darrell Lamar from Phoenix drove his driving for the missing entry featuring Carla's photo. Her face was also on the hood of Joe Nemechek's stock car at a race at California Speedway in two thousand. We went through the Review-Journal archives and we clipped at least a dozen articles about Carla, including many times where there was a teaser about the state of her case on the front page, or on the front page of the Nevada section, directing readers to an article with updates.

John Police contacted every family member or relative and even traveled to Mexico to interview families still living there on the chance they had any additional information that might be helpful. Of course, they knew she wasn't living there. On October twenty eight, nineteen ninety nine, an anonymous Las Vegas resident came forward and offered a reward of twenty five thousand dollars for information to help find Carla. The donor had seen Carla's story on the news and wanted to help. The wording of the reward was for information leading to the arrest and conviction, although that wording sounded to the press and the community like the police had determined Carla must be dead. The police repeatedly said that they hadn't given up hope that Carla was still alive. Throughout the investigation, police followed up on numerous tips. An apartment manager found a backpack in an empty apartment that was initially thought to be Carlos, but it wasn't. A girl seen at a picnic on Mount Charleston who looked a lot like Carla but wasn't. In December of nineteen ninety nine, police went to a small motel at the opposite end of the strip from Carla's neighborhood in the hopes of talking to someone who allegedly had information about her disappearance, but nothing turned up. They even traveled to New Mexico to investigate an alleged sighting and found that while the girl looked like Carla, sadly it was not her. On October twenty five, nineteen ninety nine, an eleven year old girl living in Las Vegas reported that a man in a mid nineteen eighties Cadillac had enticed her into his car and had molested her. At the time of Carla's disappearance, police were distributing his sketch and publicizing the description of his car as a possible lead. The police said this man was just one of hundreds of possibilities they were considering. According to reporting in the Las Vegas Sun, from May of two thousand, detectives had filled more than thirty binders, which took up two three foot long shelves in their offices with information, tips and interviews. They interviewed dozens of people, including local sex offenders who were known to live in Carla's neighborhood. But nothing came of these interviews. No one who was tested failed a polygraph test, including both of her parents, who were eliminated very early on as suspects.

Shaun However, there were two people who police believed may have been responsible for Carla's possible abduction and her disappearance. On October fourteen, nineteen ninety nine, less than a week before Carla disappeared, a man named Kyle Bell escaped from a prison transport. Bell was convicted of murdering eleven year old Genie North, a girl from Fargo, North Dakota. Genie left her home in June of nineteen ninety three to go rollerblading with friends, when Bell abducted and murdered her. He was being transferred, along with other prisoners, to a supermax prison in Oregon when the bus stopped for gas in Santa Rosa, New Mexico on October fourteen, Bell escaped. He had hidden a key in the sole of his shoe that was missed during his strip search. He removed his handcuffs and leg irons and climbed out of the ventilation hatch onto the roof of the bus. He laid down on the roof of the bus until the bus started to pull away, and then he slid off and ran. The prison transport company failed to even notice he was missing for nine hours. When Karla went missing, Kyle Bell was at large and as he was a convicted child molester and a murderer, and Jeannie had been out rollerblading with friends when she was kidnapped. Naturally, the police believed that Bell could have come to Las Vegas, and he could have seen Karla out riding her bike and abducted her. Kyle Bell was finally recaptured in Dallas, Texas, on January nine, two thousand. He had made it all the way there and even rented an apartment with a fake ID when he was featured on a segment of America's Most Wanted. One of the employees for the apartment complex called In the tip and ended up collecting that fifty thousand dollars reward for turning him in. Police were not ever able to tie Bell's movements to Las Vegas, and he was never conclusively tied to Carla's disappearance.

John One suspect, who does seem a lot more likely to have been potentially responsible is serial killer Curtis Dean Anderson. Anderson was a serial predator and murderer. He was sent to San Quentin in nineteen ninety two for kidnapping a friend's wife at gunpoint and forcing her to drive him to Oregon. He was released from San Quentin in May of nineteen ninety nine. On August twelve, two thousand, he kidnapped an eight year old girl, Mitzi Sanchez from Vallejo, California, who was walking home from school alone. He held her captive for two days, but she was able to escape when he left her alone in his car. He was arrested and eventually confessed to multiple murders, including the kidnapping murder of seven year old Gianna Fairchild, also from Vallejo, California. Gianna was abducted in December of Nineteen ninety nine. Just like Mitzi, she was walking home from school when he kidnapped her. Her remains were later discovered near San Jose, California, sixty miles from where she lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He ultimately pleaded guilty to her murder and was sentenced to three hundred years in prison. Anderson also confessed to the abduction and murder of seven year old Amber Schwartz Garcia in June nineteen eighty eight from Pinole, California. He kidnapped Amber while she was jumping rope in front of her house, forced her to drink alcohol, and drove her thirteen hours to Tucson, where he killed her and buried her in Benson, Arizona. He also had other adult victims in both the United States and in Mexico. Given that the girls who Anderson horrifically murdered were all Latina and all around the same age, and the circumstances of their kidnappings were all so similar, the police and the FBI tried to link Anderson to Karla's disappearance.

Shaun Vallejo police determined that Anderson was in Las Vegas in March of two thousand. He had even surrendered a Nevada driver's license to authorities in California, according to reporting from October two thousand. Vallejo police did not confirm to the Las Vegas Review Journal the exact date that Anderson turned over that license. According to the FBI. Police also found a receipt in Anderson's car when he was arrested after Mitzi's kidnapping. The receipt was from October twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, the day Carla disappeared from one forty one p m. From a cigarette store in Las Vegas, only one point one miles from Carla's house. Police have stated that Anderson was confirmed to be at doctor's appointments in San Jose, California, the day before October nineteen and on October twenty second. San Jose is about an eight hour car ride from Las Vegas.

John According to the Review-Journal, when Anderson was arrested in two thousand, receipts, plural, were found in Anderson's pockets that linked him to Las Vegas. The FBI has never definitively said that Anderson is responsible for Carla's disappearance, but it seems clear that he was back and forth to and from Las Vegas on occasion. When he died in prison in two thousand and seven, maps of Nevada were found in his cell, marked with X's. And of course, the FBI followed up on those. They went out into the desert to inspect the spots marked on the map. The FBI Evidence Response team searched for Carla with ground penetrating radar twice in twenty twenty and again in twenty twenty one, but unfortunately, Carla has not been located as far back as January of two thousand. Police began trying to match Carla to any unidentified child remains that had been discovered across the country. They have repeatedly told the Review-Journal that they were hoping Carla was alive, but admitted that the likelihood of her being dead increases as each day goes by. In two thousand and two, police released an age progressed sketch of Carla. The police reported that there have been several additional sightings of Carla over the years, and that they always follow up on any leads that they receive for the twentieth anniversary of her disappearance. They have further age progressed. Her photo showing how she would have looked into her twenties and finally how she'd look at age thirty.

Shaun Despite the fact that they have had no answers for almost twenty five years. Karla's family never gave up on finding her. Karla's parents never moved out of the home they lived in, hoping that one day she'd come back. The family participated in a press conference in twenty nineteen, on the twentieth anniversary of Karla's disappearance, in which her dad was photographed holding her favorite doll. In twenty nineteen, her parents donated DNA samples and hope that there may someday be a match in the DNA database. We talked recently about the advances in forensic genealogy, which has been responsible for solving some remarkable cold cases. Unfortunately, in this case, with Karla being missing, there's nothing to compare. If her remains were found someday. Of course, Othram would be the lab that could identify her. We want to share this quote from Karla's sister, Rosie. It's amazing how people can wait like this and go on with their lives. It's not easy. Trust me. It's not easy having a member of your family missing. It's horrible. And nobody deserves this. When Carla was last seen, she was wearing a blue jacket, a blue and white striped shirt, and red pants. Her fingernails were painted green, and she primarily spoke Spanish. Carla has a medical scar on her abdomen from her appendectomy and a small mole above her right eyebrow. As with all the missing persons cases we share, we'll share the photos we have. And if you have any information about the location of Carla, you're encouraged to reach out to the Las Vegas Metro Police Homicide Division at seven hundred and two eight two eight three five two one. The FBI is currently offering a reward of five thousand dollars for information leading to Carla's location. Thanks for listening, and if you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review and consider joining our Patreon. We want to be able to keep bringing you these important stories, and we'd appreciate the support. When you join Patreon, you'll get access to ad free versions of all the episodes, along with our Swing Shift bonus content, where we go a bit more in depth after the episode and offer more theories on the cases. Thank you again, and always remember what happens here happens everywhere.

John Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod.co/subscribe to subscribe to exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and threads SNL and survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at Questions@sinsandsurvivors.com.

Shaun Com if you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or need support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website sinsandsurvivors.com. Sins and survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast is researched, written and produced by your host, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found at sinspod.co/27sources

John Com the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.