Jen Swan
Appearances
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I first became aware of Sarah's videos when I saw that someone had tagged her in the comments of the My Friend Daisy TikTok. Can you please help share this? They'd written. Sarah didn't end up seeing the video, she told me. Her notifications are always blowing up, so it's easy for stuff to get buried.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
People who make videos about missing or murdered friends and loved ones, they often tag Sarah, hoping that she'll repost them to her more than a million TikTok followers. Sarah went viral in April of 2020. She'd made a TikTok about her sister's disappearance. She'd tried for nearly two decades to get police to investigate, but nothing worked. Until TikTok did.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Four months after she posted the TikTok, the person she'd been accusing of murder had officially been charged. It was her father.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
A jury later acquitted him. But Sarah's TikTok was like this case study. for others who desperately wanted to have their day in court, to see charges filed, investigations closed. And they knew they had a powerful resource at their disposal.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Sarah talks about TikTok as this democratizing tool, this thing with the power to boost stories that aren't getting attention elsewhere. Like all social media platforms, it also carries a risk of circulating misinformation or just having it spin out of control. But to people like Sarah, the risks are worth it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I think that's one of the reasons why I got so many responses to the article that I ended up writing about Daisy for New York magazine's The Cut. Maybe it was the fact that her story first surfaced on TikTok. It was the story that otherwise might not have been reported on by the local TV news or by me. But after the article was published, I had this feeling.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It was sort of like that feeling I had when I was watching that news segment. Like, this wasn't the end of the story. There was still this part of it that I hadn't uncovered yet. Like, what actually went wrong during the police investigation? Why had it stalled? How did it get to this point where Daisy's friends and family felt the need to take it into their own hands?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And there were bigger questions I had, too. Like, was social media the only way to get attention on a murder case when it involved someone who wasn't rich or who wasn't already kind of famous? What was the effect this was having on the families of crime victims, putting themselves in the spotlight as a last resort? Was our justice system fundamentally broken?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
In other words, how much depends upon a TikTok? When I started making this series, I had already interviewed people who created the posts about Daisy. But I hadn't yet talked to those who had consumed them, who sprang into action, who I would soon discover put their own safety on the line and hunted for the suspect in their own backyards. What compelled them to get involved?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I was interested in exploring this idea of vigilante justice. Why did so many people in Daisy's community feel abandoned by law enforcement? And where did their drive come from, this drive to demand accountability by any means necessary? I ended up sitting down with both detectives in person for the first time.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I spoke to lots of people who knew Daisy, and I spoke to a lot of people who had only ever seen her on their phone screens. I sifted through legal documents, and I gained access to records I had never seen before. Records that really shifted my understanding of this case. And I ended up speaking with the person whose photos I had seen all over the internet.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The person who, according to that TikTok, had murdered Daisy. Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
If you've ever scrolled through TikTok, then you know it's full of people sharing the most intimate and sometimes the most mundane parts of their lives. People who film everything they ate in a day, everything they purchased on the internet, everything they wore on vacation. People who see their lives as content. Daisy DeLaO was not one of those people.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The last time any of Daisy's family members saw her alive was February 22nd, 2021. It was a Monday, an ordinary Monday by most standards, filled with work and chores and errands. But to Daisy's mother, Susanna, this day stuck out. It's so weird, she told me, but that day, we spent the whole day together.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Susanna relayed this to me the first time I interviewed her, in November 2021, nearly nine months after her daughter's murder. She'd suggested we meet for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in her neighborhood. It was wedged in a suburban strip mall in southeast L.A. Reminders of Daisy were everywhere.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The CVS where she had worked was just a few doors down, and the junior high and high schools she graduated from were a short drive away. Suzanne and I sat on stools at the bar. She told me she goes by Susie. She had big brown eyes and long brown hair parted to one side. There was this loud mariachi music playing in the background. So the audio from this interview isn't great.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And Susie did not want to be re-interviewed for this series. Talking about it again on tape would be too painful. We ordered tacos and we got to talking. At one point, the bartender maybe sensed that we were having this difficult conversation. She brought over two shots of tequila on the house. And Susie proceeded to tell me about this one day she remembered vividly.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She wasn't planning to do laundry that day. The laundromat was just across the street, but it meant loading and unloading the car, waiting around for hours, and she just didn't want to deal with it. But Daisy convinced her otherwise. Come on, lady. Come on, Susie remembers Daisy had said.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Daisy had this way about her, this way of cheering on her mother, rallying her to do the stuff she didn't feel like doing. At the laundromat, Daisy worked on a crossword puzzle. And at one point, she looked up and told her mom that some guy was checking her out. Susie chimed in. How about that one? He's checking you out. Ew, gross, Daisy had said. At 19, she was roughly half the age of her mother.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
They were both adults, and to Susie, their easy relationship felt like a relief, especially after all the hardships of the previous few years. Years when Susie didn't always know where Daisy was. She was worried she might flunk out of high school, never mind making it to college. Susie had grown frustrated. She worked long hours and she didn't have time to track Daisy's every move.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And so she showed her tough love. She let her screw up and then deal with the consequences. And that was when something surprising happened, she told me. That's when Daisy started getting her life on track. She started going to night school to make up for all the classes she'd missed. She went to prom with friends. She wore a floor-length, baby blue strapless gown.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She looked like punk rock Cinderella, her white blonde hair glowing like a halo. And by the spring of 2019, she'd made up enough credits to walk at graduation with the rest of her class. That fall, she enrolled at East LA College, about a half hour northeast of Compton. She'd even gotten a job on campus, welcoming new students. At least until COVID hit and the school went online.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She was not an influencer or a vlogger or a content creator. She didn't like to share her secrets with the world. Sometimes she even hid them from the people closest to her. When she was murdered at the age of 19, her Instagram contained just five posts, only two of which showed her face. Slightly more than 100 people followed her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Daisy dreamed of becoming a makeup and tattoo artist, of starting her own business. She didn't want to work for nobody, Susie told me. But in the meantime, she was super focused on a short-term goal, one she was on the verge of achieving. She had saved up enough money to buy a used car. It seemed like everything was going perfect, Susie told me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
After they got home that night from the laundromat, Susie said she had no energy to make dinner. And that's when Daisy started in with her rallying cry. Come on, lady, come on. Susie went to the kitchen. She made chicken tinga. She and Daisy joined Daisy's grandparents in the living room. They all lived together, along with Daisy's younger brother. It was a little cramped.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
There was just one bathroom, but they made do. A Spanish-language news show was playing on the television. Daisy curled up near Susie's feet, and there was this sense of calmness. Everyone was in a good mood, especially Daisy. That's Daisy's grandfather, Juan de la O. He has a round face, bushy eyebrows, and graying hair. He says that Daisy was about to buy a car.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Especially at that age, he said, you get excited that you're going to have your own car. It was a big deal. In LA, a car means freedom. Which was probably really important when you share an apartment with your grandparents and your mother and your brother. Especially because the bus from Daisy's apartment to work took her almost an hour. Took even longer for her to get to campus.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
But it was worth it. Daisy was on track to get her associate's degree in just a few months. Maybe it was her knowledge of all the good things on the horizon that put Daisy in such a good mood that night.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
That's Miguel Contreras. He conducted this interview with me, and he also served as a translator. Miguel and I interviewed Juan in the living room of his Compton apartment. It's the top unit in a two-story cream-colored building off of Busy Boulevard. It's the place where Daisy and her mother and her little brother used to live.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Miguel noticed a piece of colored tinsel taped to the wall near the kitchen. He asked if it was for a party.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The tinsel was left over actually from two Christmases ago.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The night that he was telling us about, it stuck out in his memory because of how peaceful it was, how calm it was, how everyone was getting along. But the energy in the room seemed to change sometime around 10.30 p.m. That's when Daisy got a text message. She looked down at her phone, and she announced that she was going to step outside.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
They were mostly friends from high school and college, people she knew in real life. Nobody else would have known to find her there. Her real name wasn't even on the account. To anyone outside of her social circle, her profile was essentially unsearchable. Her LinkedIn page, created just six months before her death, listed no activity and no connections.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It stuck out to him, the way she gave her mother and her grandmother this big hug before walking out the door. She assured them that she wouldn't be long. I'll be right back, she'd said. Early the next morning, Jose Tellez went to take out the trash. He's the property manager at the building where Daisy's family lived.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
He's in his late 50s with piercing green eyes, dark hair speckled with gray, and a white goatee. He was born in Michoacan, but he spent more than half his life here in Compton. And for most of that time, he's lived and worked here. The property consists of eight buildings. There are these boxy bungalows with steps that wind down the front of them, connecting the second story to the ground floor.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
There's 32 units in all. And Jose knows just about everyone who lives here. A lot of his tenants use Section 8 vouchers, he told me. They're essentially federally subsidized rent payments. It's not always easy to find landlords who accept Section 8. So tenants here, they tend to stay a while. Jose is always busy taking care of something or another.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Like, on the day that I showed up at the property to talk to him, he was busy trimming trees. While we talked, tenants came up to ask him questions. He takes pride in his job. He said he's always working. And that Tuesday morning in February of 2021 was no exception. Jose walked across the complex to the patch of concrete where all the garbage bins were stored.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
He started wheeling them out to the alley, one by one, saving the bulky items for last. One of those items was a big blue and gray patterned rug. It had been laying on the ground a few feet away from the garbage bins in the walkway between two apartment buildings.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Jose walked over to it and lifted it up. But when he saw what was underneath it, he froze. It was a body lying face down on the ground.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I don't get scared of nothing. But hey, I find some person there and I don't know what I'm going to do. Jose had seen and heard a lot during his more than three decades as building manager. He'd even witnessed death in the back alley.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
He started panicking. But the first call he made wasn't to the police. It was to his wife. Call the cops, she responded. It seems obvious, but to Jose it wasn't exactly intuitive. Because, like a lot of the people I spoke with in his building, Jose had not had the best experiences with police. He told me it often took them a long time to show up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And sometimes their presence made a bad situation worse. Like, there was this one time.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And her Facebook, it seemingly hadn't been touched in years. For the most part, Daisy lived her life offline, and that was the way that she liked it. But when her life was cut short in February of 2021, a strange thing happened. Daisy went viral. Photos and videos of her began to appear online. And there was this one TikTok that really told the story of her life and death.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's a long story. It involves an aggressive former tenant and Jose firing a gun into the air. He says it was to try to scare him away from the property. But Jose's takeaway was that the next time he had a problem, he'd deal with it himself. Less of a hassle than getting the police involved. But on that morning, when he found the body, he knew this was not something he could handle on his own.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
the operator asks Jose to speak up. She sounds agitated. She says she can barely hear him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
But it seems pretty clear it's not the volume that's the issue. It's the language barrier.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
As Jose waited for the police to arrive, his mind raced with questions. Who was this person? How did they end up here? And who had done this to them? This season on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The first frame of it showed Daisy on a carnival ride. It's the one where you grip the steering wheel and spin it around and around in circles until you either puke or lose your voice from screaming so much. Five words appear across the screen. This is my friend Daisy. Daisy is wearing wingtip eyeliner and a gold septum ring. She's got black and turquoise hair peeking out from under her beanie.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The neon lights from the carnival cast this purple glow across her face. And there's something about her expression. It's like, I don't know, the way she's looking off to the side and her eyes and her mouth are wide with joy that is just really magnetic. A few seconds later, the TikTok cuts to a new image. And this one has no carnival rides, no smiles, no neon lighting. There's no joy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's mostly black with a collage of photos of someone else. Someone suspected of murdering her. This TikTok, it was posted on May 26th, 2021. It was less than a minute long, but it accomplished two things that nobody had been able to do up until that point. Not the media and not the police.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It got people to care about this woman they'd never met, who came from an immigrant family and a low-income neighborhood. I've watched this TikTok over and over again. I've studied it, like pausing the frames and zooming in and out and analyzing it like it's this piece of art. And I don't know, it's not like I'm looking for some kind of secret message within it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's more that I'm just in awe of its storytelling. It has this precision to it. It hooks you in, gut punches you with a series of emotions. Joy, horror, sadness, anger. And it conveys this sense of urgency, this need for justice. Not later, but right now. And not from the authorities, but from the community. It gives us permission to look for answers. To take control.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
To be the sleuths we wish to see in the world. I'm Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy. Episode 1, Sitting Ducks.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
If you lived in L.A. in the summer of 2021, you might have come across this story on the local ABC7 station. It was the kind of story that TV news shows seem to love to spotlight. It was about a promising young girl, the senseless violence that ended her life, and the single mother left shattered. There were tearful interviews set to a slow piano instrumental. The whole thing was deeply tragic.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Like, unspeakably sad. But the news segment also had this unexpected element.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The TikTok campaign. It immediately piqued my interest. This idea that TikTok, a platform nobody outside of Gen Z seemed to understand and which the federal government wants to ban, could actually lend a voice to the people who needed it the most. And then there were the photos of Daisy herself that drew me in. I didn't know her, but she reminded me of myself and my friends in high school.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The piercings, the rainbow hair colors, the fishnet stockings. She dressed like I did when I was a teenager. when I didn't quite know who I was, but I knew I wasn't like everyone else. Or at least that's what I told myself. And there was something I couldn't get out of my mind when I first saw this news segment. Susanna grateful to the L.A.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It was the way detectives had been celebrated in that news clip. The narration was so over the top. that I almost wondered if it was a PR stunt for the sheriffs. I found it confusing. Because it raised this question for me. If that was true, if detectives had been working endlessly on this case, then why did Daisy's friends feel the need to get involved and try to solve it themselves?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
To take matters into their own hands and launch their own seemingly rogue campaign? I had the sense that there was something missing from the story. Something that just couldn't be contained in this short news segment. And I immediately wanted to know what it was. So I got in touch with Susana Salas. We talked for hours.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And she told me about something one of the detectives on the case had told her. It was something I'd heard her talk about on that news segment. And he'd say, I promise you, Mija, we're going to find them. But then she told me something that didn't make it onto that TV segment, which is that the detective's words did little to reassure her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
When she heard them, she thought to herself, bullshit, it's a Mexican-American girl. Who's going to care about her? It turned out a lot of people. Daisy's friends made sure of it. I spent a lot of time speaking with them in the months following Daisy's murder. At that point, they hadn't been interviewed on the news or by anyone at all that I could tell.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I wanted to understand what had compelled them to become their own detectives, to put their trauma on display for the world. And it became clear pretty quickly that these teenage girls hadn't made these TikToks and Instagrams and Facebook posts for clout. They definitely did not want to be investigating their friend's unsolved murder. But they felt they had no other choice.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And this thing they did, it was pretty gutsy. But it didn't exist in a vacuum. It was part of this larger phenomenon of friends and loved ones turning to social media when the so-called justice system wasn't working for them.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She's a true crime TikToker, YouTuber, and podcaster. If you've ever spent time watching true crime on TikTok, or crime talk as it's sometimes called, then chances are you've seen Sarah's videos. Talking to her over Zoom felt a little surreal. It was almost like jumping into one of her videos to ask questions.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Questions like, what would compel someone to talk about their loved one's murder or disappearance on social media? To ask the public for help in solving a case.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's a last resort, Sarah told me, because it requires a degree of vulnerability, which means it can also open the door to harassment.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
That's Detective Ray Lugo. He's got broad shoulders and a bald head. He used to be a high school football coach, and he still kind of got that coach vibe. Like, he likes to remind me that he was the lead detective on Daisy's case. He says he always had a plan for it. He walked me around the office and pointed to newspaper clippings and photographs on the wall.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Okay. Were there ever any records of him having a history with domestic abuse besides this one assault charge?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It's a word that Lugo used to describe Victor at least six different times during our 90-minute interview.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
But Victor wasn't a kid. He was 25 when he murdered Daisy. When he fled. When, more than three months later, Daisy's friends and family began posting about it online. And when, a little more than a month after that, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department decided to co-opt their strategy. They turned to social media, too.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
The local news began broadcasting Victor's name and photo after the sheriffs posted a flyer about him on their Facebook page. WANTED FOR MURDER, the graphic said in all caps across the top of the flyer. In the center was a DMV photo of Victor. It had been taken about four years earlier, actually around the time that he met Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
In it, he had shaggy hair that fell to the base of his neck and clear gauges in his ears.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
The local CBS news station wasn't the only media outlet to pick up the sheriff's announcement. The LA Times ran a story, and this time, it included Daisy's name and details about her life. Her mom was quoted in the article talking about how she dreamed of opening a salon someday. And Lugo was quoted in it too.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
He said that he believed Victor had fled to Mexico, but had since returned to the LA area. And that he'd recently been seen in homeless encampments all over town. These sightings, they were the result of all the calls that Lugo had been getting. Calls from people who had seen the TikToks and the Instagrams.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
And because this is Los Angeles, there were also movie posters.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Hang on. The CODIS hit came back in the middle of March? Just three weeks after Daisy's murder? I thought about all the weeks that passed after that, weeks when her friends and family were on pins and needles waiting for updates. I thought about Daisy's neighbors, watching their backs around the apartment complex, wondering who the killer was, not knowing he had any relation to his victim.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It was impossible not to wonder what might have happened if the detectives had put out Victor's name and photo after they first got this CODIS hit. What exactly was gained by waiting an additional three months to warn the public? And what was lost? I sat there in the conference room, dumbfounded.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I'd been working on the story for three years at that point in some form or another, and this piece of information about the date of the CODIS hit, it had totally eluded me up until then. I must have had this blank stare on my face when I heard it, because Lugo suddenly seemed self-conscious. There was this awkward silence, and then he said,
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I just, yeah, when you say that, I know you've explained this to me before, but when you say the CODIS that you're saying that you were able to sample the DNA from the scene and match it with the DNA from his previous arrest. Is that right? Yes, yes. Okay, but then the public didn't know to look for Victor until I think June, the end of June you put out that report.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
So walk me through, like, how do you make the decision about when to tell the public, you know, okay, we're looking for this guy, here's what he looks like. If the CODIS hit was in March, tell me about, like, April, May, June.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I spoke to Lugo and his partner Sanchez multiple times to try to clarify this timeline. to try to understand their reasoning for not putting out this information sooner. They maintained that they were working with Victor's family to try to track him down. They didn't want to put out the information about him to the public because they didn't want to scare him off.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
They were afraid that he'd find out people were looking for him and he'd flee even further south.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Never mind that by the time the detectives posted their flyer on Facebook, Victor's face had already been plastered across TikTok and Instagram for weeks. Which is probably why when people saw this flyer on Facebook, they wrote comments like, Another comment read, I can't believe you guys are just now posting this when it happened in February.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Do you feel like you get slighted if LAPD gets all the glory?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
There was this one comment that really seemed to sum up the anger of some people in the community. It read, "'Everyone's been telling the police department where he is, and they don't care. I'm ready to go out and catch him myself.'" This comment, it had been posted by Valerie Panato. Underneath that comment, she'd written the one about wanting to hunt Victor down.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
"'We need rope and a bat, because he won't go down without a fight.'" Yeah, she'd written that comment on the L.A. County Sheriff's Department's Facebook page. When I talked to her about these comments, she did not back down from them. She said she meant every word.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Was some of your anger around the fact that, like, it had been four months and Victor still hadn't been arrested, like, the comment that you wrote was something like, they don't take this seriously?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
You might be wondering, what kind of beef does Valerie have with the cops? And... It may not shock you to learn this, but she too, like so many others I spoke with in Daisy's community, had had an unnerving encounter with law enforcement. Here's how she put it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
All right, so if you didn't catch that, Lugo was saying that The Changeling was based on a sheriff's department's case, but that the movie made it all about the LAPD. When I asked if that bothered him, that the LAPD always gets the Hollywood treatment, he said no. I mean, it sounds like what he said was their junior varsity to us. Again, he's a former football coach.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Valerie, who's not scared of anything, including suspected murderers, was scared of being pulled over by the police. And yet, when a murder happened in her own community, she wondered, where were the police? What had they been doing? And so she decided she wasn't going to let this go.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
You're like, I got to talk shit for justice. I got to do it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Valerie would turn out to be right, but not in the way that anyone expected. Next time on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
And by the way, the LAPD and the LA Sheriff's Department have separate jurisdictions. The former patrols the city of LA, whereas the latter serves the county's unincorporated areas and more than 40 of its other cities. So everywhere from Palmdale to Malibu to Compton. It is a massive area. Lugo showed me a break room.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It looked kind of like a high school cafeteria, right down to the mascot that was painted on the back wall. It was this cartoon bulldog wearing a fedora, and it had a little piece of paper in the fedora, and on that piece of paper were the numbers 187, California Penal Code for Homicide. I've been noticing this bulldog everywhere.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo pointed me to a newspaper clipping mounted on a wall. It was from 1977. The headline is, Sheriff's Bulldogs Hang In Where LAPD Doesn't. Oh, so they're like pitting you against LAPD again.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Well, that's actually what I was here to talk with Lugo about. Like, what exactly was he doing while Daisy's friends and family were putting Victor on blast? Desperately looking to get attention on the case. Where was that bulldog spirit when it came to finding a murder suspect? I'm Jen Swan.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy, Episode 6, Armed and Dangerous. In June of 2021, Lugo's cell phone had been blowing up. Susie had been calling him just about every day to ask about her daughter's case. Daisy's friends and relatives were calling him too. But those weren't the only people calling about Daisy's murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo's cell phone number, he discovered, had been plastered all over the internet. Unbeknownst to him, it was on the TikToks and the Instagram and Facebook posts that Daisy's friends and family had made. The posts that had since gone viral. Now, Lugo was getting calls at all hours of the day.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
all from people who said they'd seen a murder suspect, a 20-something guy with dark hair, distinctive eyebrows, and stretched ear lobes.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I had a feeling that the reason why college students were calling didn't actually have much to do with gauged ears. It had to do with their age group and the media they were consuming. I wonder if those were also people that were seeing the TikTok and the Instagram that were put up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo said things like that a lot. Things like, that's part of our job. That's what we do. I'd come here to interview him, to find out what he and his partner had been doing all that time when Daisy's loved ones were desperately looking for answers. And he'd come to this interview ready to defend his investigation.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo had a stack of index cards in front of him, notes and talking points that he referred to every so often. We were sitting in a boardroom where, on the back wall, an American flag was printed on this big framed piece of wood. It had a thin blue line running through the middle. And in the left-hand corner, among the stars, was that cartoon bulldog in a fedora. And Lugo was in bulldog mode.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
He wasn't giving up explaining how difficult the investigation was.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I think from Susie's point of view, you know, she had, and I think she told you this from the beginning too, she had this fear that this case wouldn't be taken seriously because she's Mexican or because she lives in Compton. And it's like going to Compton, it could be a body dump. It could be an unknown victim. And so I think she always had this like defensiveness of like, I have to fight.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Everything looks very closed up, like they definitely don't want people just knocking in. I think I need to ring the bell. Hey, my name is Jennifer. I have an appointment with Ray Lugo. Hey. How's it going? It was a weekday afternoon, and I was at the Homicide Bureau of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. It's this institutional-looking building in a suburban office park just east of L.A.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
And can I ask, like, how you decided to join the shift?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It occurred to me that maybe this was the source of Lugo's competition with the LAPD. It's not an agency rivalry. It's a sibling rivalry. Lugo said he wanted to work his own neighborhood, which was under the sheriff's jurisdiction, and try to solve problems from within. He put in time as a patrol officer and then worked his way up to a night detective.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
He says he ended up solving a lot of murders, in part because he just knew a lot of people in the neighborhood and they trusted him. Eventually, he found his way to the Homicide Bureau in the mid-90s. And the only way he's been able to keep doing it is by compartmentalizing. He didn't use that word, but that's essentially what he described.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
But Daisy's case, it didn't just come together when he was driving to work or jogging on the treadmill. He did at least have a suspect. But the suspect had vanished, his whereabouts unknown, which was sometimes true even before he disappeared.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
The metro line, the place where Valerie Arellano and so many others reported seeing a skateboarder who looked like Victor.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. It's this big federal database maintained by the FBI. And it combines data from law enforcement agencies all over the country. And a CODIS hit, that's a bingo. It's when the DNA collected from a crime scene brings up a match for someone who's been arrested before. which is exactly what happened when the blood around Daisy's body was processed.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
There are stories from all over the country about social media users accusing the wrong person of a crime. It even happened in Compton, the city where Daisy lived, about eight months before her friends took to social media to find her killer.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
There are stories of sleuths misidentifying someone as a victim or filming them without their consent because, you know, they thought they were a missing person.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Why does she look so lost? There are stories about the way good intentions can become misguided search parties, like this one that Sarah Turney reported on.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
But this is not one of those stories. Because when DNA evidence from the crime scene was processed, it showed that the person Daisy's friends and family had been adamant about, the person they'd been calling detectives about and making videos about and circulating photos of, It was the same person whose DNA was found at the crime scene.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
A few weeks later, a different woman, also named Valerie, was having an emotionally intense day of her own. She took to Facebook to let out some rage. She wrote in a public comment that she'd been hearing all kinds of rumors about where Victor was hiding. He'd been catching the blue line and sneaking around the L.A. riverbed, she wrote. And now she wanted to go hunt him down.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
We have to lay low to get him, she wrote. We need rope and a bat, because he won't go down without a fight. When I stumbled upon these comments, posted in June of 2021, I was really taken aback by Valerie's aggression. This, like, take-no-prisoners attitude she had. It made me think about how so many people were terrified of running into Victor. And yet, Here she was, seeking him out.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
I immediately wanted to know, who was this woman? Why was she acting like this, you know, vigilante superhero? And how did she become so invested in catching a murder suspect?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Each of the photos showed off some identifying feature, gauged ears or a tattoo of what looked like big rats crawling up his ribcage. The text on the post was in all capital letters. If seen, please contact us. Wendy, Daisy's former neighbor, she saw this post while she was scrolling through her Instagram feed one night.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
On a sweltering summer day, I stood in the parking lot of a mobile home community near Compton. And when I spotted someone who looked like Valerie Pinato's Facebook photo, I flagged her down. She was short with square black glasses, and she had a haircut that Daisy once had, a black bob with blonde bangs.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Once we got to her place, she led me to a small wooden table in her living room.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Eventually, we got to talking about Daisy. So, and then tell me how you first heard that Daisy had been murdered.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie remembered looking at the photos and thinking that Daisy looked familiar. She was pretty sure she'd seen her around, maybe at a punk show. It seemed possible. They lived close to each other, and they seemed interested in the same kinds of music. To Valerie, Daisy's story felt personal.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
You actually went to people's houses and said, are you harboring this person, Victor?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
But Valerie wouldn't take no for an answer. She was convinced that Victor had to be somewhere, hiding. And if other people weren't going to rat him out, she'd find him herself.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
What was sort of going through your head? Like, had you thought through what you would do if you actually saw him?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
There it was, that anger, that desire for revenge that I'd read in Valerie's Facebook comment. I was just as surprised by it in person as I was when I read it online. Surprised, by the way, that, I don't know, Valerie was willing to risk her own safety to take action against what she saw as an injustice. Not just in this instance, but in a bunch of others she told me about.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Like, she told me about this time that she hunted down and confronted a friend's boyfriend after she heard that he'd been abusive to her. And then there was this other time she climbed a ladder at a punk show and jumped off it to attack a guy she'd seen hitting girls in the pit. Seriously.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Wendy knew who Victor was. She used to see him hanging around the apartment complex with Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie showed me the spot on her eyelid where she said she got punched.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Tough felt like an understatement. I wanted to know what was behind it. So I asked her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Military school, the kind that teenagers get sent to when their parents think they need to be straightened out. There are drill sergeants, physical training, the whole nine yards. It was so intense, Valerie said, that she realized she could face anything after that. And then where did you get your sense of, like, justice?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Like, it seems like you have a strong sense of, like, the community has this power that the police don't have. Like, where did that come from?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Especially because of what she saw some of her own family members go through.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Women like Valerie. She told me that at one point in her life, she found herself in a relationship that had become violent. And eventually she realized she needed to get out.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Like, how did you have this knowledge to be like, oh, to even get a DV counselor, I think is something that or therapist is something that I think a lot of women need. or some women in that situation maybe wouldn't know to do? Like how, yeah, how did you navigate that?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
What Valerie proceeded to tell me was actually not that funny. But I got the sense that she's someone who copes with difficult experiences through humor. She said that she never really wanted to enroll in therapy. But her caseworker knew she was struggling with housing insecurity because of domestic violence. And in order to maintain her government benefits, she was told she had to sign up for it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie said that the experience of doing it, of going to therapy and getting out of a bad relationship, it taught her a lot.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
That is really what drew her to Daisy's story. It wasn't just that she was also in the punk scene and lived in the neighborhood. It was that she knew what it was like to be hurt by someone she loved.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
But as much as she looked and as determined as she was, Valerie never did find Victor. Nobody seemed to know where he was hiding, including the detectives. But all of these social media posts, they were doing something. They were getting more eyes on the case, more community involvement. They were building public pressure, the kind of pressure detectives couldn't ignore.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendel Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
And I wanted to let you know about the statistics that I cited in this episode. They come from the CDC. They were published in July of 2017. And you can find them online under the title, Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
And if you're interested in reading more about the link between intimate partner violence and homicide, there's another study that I read called Examining Intimate Partner Violence-Related Fatalities, It was published in the Journal of Family Violence in January of 2023. Thank you so much for listening.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
It's the homepage that shows this never-ending scroll of TikToks from people who you may or may not follow. They're all served up by this super secretive algorithm to fit each user's individual interests. And these TikToks must have showed up on a lot of people's For You pages. Because there were comments from people shouting out their locations.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
People as far away as Texas and Washington and even Canada. They commented as proof of how far the TikTok had spread. And no one knows exactly how the TikTok algorithm works, but there's this popular thinking around it, which is that the more comments a TikTok gets, the more often it'll appear on For You pages.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
So people kind of just kept commenting as a way to sort of show how much the TikTok had spread, but also to boost its visibility in other people's feeds. And it became this thing where people shouted out their locations all over Southern California. Southgate, Huntington Park, South Central, Long Beach, Riverside, San Diego.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
It was like this neighborhood watch assembling on the internet in real time. There were comments from people who lived in Daisy's neighborhood and people who were appalled that they hadn't heard about Daisy's murder until that very moment, including people who actually knew Daisy, like Lolly, her friend from middle school.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Lolly's in her early 20s, and like a lot of people in her age group that I reached out to for this story, she was just trustful of the media.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
I found Loli's view disheartening, but I get it. I mean, in the instance of Daisy's murder, Lolly was right. The news only covered it once it had gone viral. Prior to that, the only article about the murder, it didn't even mention Daisy by name. It only referred to her as a Jane Doe.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
But once people learn Daisy's story, once they found out that she had a name and a life and friends and family who cared so deeply about her, they felt compelled to join the search party to help find her murderer. But vigilante justice can be a tricky thing. Because once you spot the culprit or, you know, the person that you believe is the culprit, what do you do next? Do you call the cops?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Do you alert the media? I mean, do you rely on these same institutions that have previously failed you? Or do you roll up your sleeves and deal with it yourself? Does violence justify more violence? What is the right way to deliver justice in the age of TikTok? I'm Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy, Episode 5. Are you hiding him?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
It was a Sunday afternoon in early June of 2021, and Valerie Arellano was panicking. She was standing on the Metro light rail train platform when she spotted a guy with a skateboard in his hand. Valerie did a double take. He looked a lot like Victor.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
You might remember Valerie. She grew up in Huntington Park. She knew Daisy back in high school. She never met Victor, but she'd been seeing photos of him all over Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. The posts had been circulating for a little less than two weeks. And because of them, Valerie had a pretty good sense of what Victor looked like.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker. He was notorious for breaking into homes and assaulting and murdering women in LA in the mid-1980s. When the police finally identified him and shared his mugshot with the public, it sent the whole city on a manhunt. Residents caught him attempting a carjacking just a day later.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
They beat him up so badly that when the police came and arrested him, he reportedly shouted, I'm lucky the cops caught me But this was a much different situation. The police hadn't released a photo of Victor, but Valerie had little doubt that it was him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie's right. Some reports have found that more than half of all women killed in the United States were murdered by a current or former male intimate partner. That percentage goes up when the victim is a young woman of color.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie knew these statistics intuitively, and like a lot of people who had been following this case, she had been frustrated by the seeming lack of progress made by detectives and and the lack of news coverage by the media. I mean, all she knew about it was what she'd been seeing on her social media feeds.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie was also scared. Or, as her friend Chantel Patrice put it, Valerie was freaking out. And at first, Chantel had no idea why.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
The TikToks appeared on a Wednesday in late May. One of them began with the words, this is my friend Daisy. Maybe you can already picture it. The carnival ride, the neon colors, the high school graduation photo, and then the cut to photos of Victor. Each of the TikToks had slightly different music and different photos and videos, but all of them told the same story.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie desperately wanted Victor to get caught, but she didn't want to call 911.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie, like a lot of people I spoke with in Daisy's community, had not had the most pleasant interactions with law enforcement. She told me about a time early on in the pandemic when she was in a car with her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend. A cop pulled them over and insisted that their car was registered as stolen.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Eventually, according to Valerie, the cop told them that the real reason he pulled them over was because he was looking for Valerie's uncle. The car had been registered to a house where he lived at one point.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Okay, so what Valerie is describing, it's known as a pretextual stop. It's basically when a cop pulls you over for something minor in order to ask you questions about a much larger, unrelated potential offense. It was such a widespread practice that California actually passed a law about a year ago banning it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
So now when police pull you over, at least in California, they have to tell you exactly why they're doing so. All to say, when Valerie saw the skateboarder who looked like Victor, she did not immediately call the police. Instead, she sent a Facebook message to her best friend, the friend who used to live with Daisy and her family.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie showed me the messages she sent to her best friend that day. They were dated June 6th, 2021. I called the detective.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie found his cell phone number plastered all over the social media posts that Daisy's friends and family had made. And this number, right there on the flyers, it seemed a lot more accessible, more appropriate than simply calling 911.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Lugo called Valerie back. She told him what she'd seen. Her heart was pounding, her adrenaline pumping. It was hard to get words out. I think I, I was just so nervous.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Daisy's life mattered, and the person who took it was still running free. An Instagram post was published the same day, on a new account called Justice for Daisy. This post contained a slideshow of photos of Victor. A lot of them were taken from his own Instagram, In one of them, he wore a striped beanie. In another, a bowler hat.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's Ray Lugo. He works for the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, and he was the lead detective on this case. At that point, Lugo told me, he and his partner, Leo Sanchez, were still waiting for the DNA from the crime scene to be processed. Here's how Sanchez put it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Or because her son Jeffrey, who was 13 at the time, had been the one to identify Daisy's body to the police. It was also because one of Wendy's belongings ended up becoming a key piece of evidence. The blue patterned carpet that had been placed over Daisy's body. It was Wendy's.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
it doesn't happen like on the TV shows. It's something I've heard a lot from both Sanchez and Lukow.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They may not have had a witness, but they did have what they thought would be a vital piece of evidence, surveillance footage from the crime scene.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The detectives had told me that getting surveillance video like this one, it wasn't always easy, especially in places like Compton, where residents didn't always see the benefit of handing over evidence to the police. Here's what Sanchez told me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
But when detectives reviewed the video, they discovered it did not reveal much. The grainy black and white footage had been captured from a distance. It showed the shadowy figure of a person out by the alley where the garbage bins were. They were dragging something in the corner of the frame, but it wasn't enough to prove that it was Victor. It wasn't enough to make an arrest.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
What do you mean you don't, like, what, did you actually get the warrant?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Okay. So did you actually, were you actually tracking his cell phone or was it not approved?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Even Victor's own mother couldn't find him. The same week that Daisy's body was found, Victor's mom filed a missing persons report for her son. It was all deeply distressing to Susie. She continued to call Detective Lugo every day, asking for updates. And each time, she hoped to hear the words, We've got him. We've made an arrest. But the weeks continued to slip by, and those words never came.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Susie's sadness turned to anger. Her biggest fear, she said, was that Daisy's case wouldn't be taken seriously because she wasn't white. If you're white, she remembered thinking, then you get the spotlight. And there's plenty of research to suggest that Susie's fears aren't wrong. Academic studies have found that white homicide victims generally garner the most news coverage.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And federal data shows that these cases are also the most likely to be solved. To Daisy's mother and to some of Daisy's friends, it felt like detectives had simply moved on. Given up. They keep us in the dark, Susie told me. They keep the victim's family in the dark. It's a feeling that Wendy knows intimately.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
So in the time between Daisy's murder and when I interviewed Wendy, about three years later, something horrific had happened to her. Something that completely shattered her life, which is that she had lost her own child to murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Wendy's son, Jeffrey, the boy who grew up with Daisy and later identified her potty, was fatally shot the day after Christmas, 2023. Wendy and I met up four months after that. Everything was still raw. and still completely unresolved. Because at that point, she still had no idea who killed her son.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The LA County Sheriff's Department wouldn't tell me anything either. They said they couldn't give me any information about an ongoing investigation. Wendy felt that the sheriffs were giving her the runaround, even treating her as a suspect. When she got to the hospital the night that Jeffrey had been shot, she said the sheriffs were standing outside his room and wouldn't let her inside.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
At some point, a doctor informed Wendy that her son didn't make it. But even then, she said, the sheriffs wouldn't allow her into the room to see his body. She wasn't even allowed to go to her car.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Wendy said she tried calling the detective assigned to the case. She said that he told her she wouldn't have to pay the $80 to get her car released. But the call went straight to voicemail, and Wendy paid the bill. In the absence of information about her son's murder, her mind just started racing, trying to imagine what might have happened that night.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Okay, I'll just say it is unclear whether the knives she threw away were in fact the murder weapon.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
After that, Wendy retreated. She felt alienated by the police, abandoned by them. She was grieving, and she didn't have the energy to keep calling the detectives to demand answers. Answers they didn't seem to have anyway.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Another death in Compton. Who cares? That was the impression Wendy got from the sheriff's department.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
I'm going to come back to Jeffrey's story later in this series. But when I interviewed Daisy's friends and relatives in the months following her murder, they often expressed some variation of that sentiment. That anger, that grief that Wendy was now feeling. There was this feeling that the authorities had collectively shrugged in the face of murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Some of Daisy's friends did not want to be interviewed again for this podcast. They were still trying to process their grief to move on from it. Some had recently become mothers. They were 20-somethings who were living their adult lives like Daisy should have been. But one of Daisy's friends from high school told me something that really stuck with me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
I remembered the anger, the matter-of-factness in her voice. The cops, she said, half-ass everything in our communities, especially in Compton. They become so desensitized to violence that they forget it's someone's daughter on the floor, stabbed to death, she said. Three months after Daisy's murder, there had been no significant updates in the case.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
There were no press conferences, no news of a possible DNA match. There were no rewards offered for information leading to an arrest. And the police had yet to announce that there was even a suspect. They hadn't released Victor's name or his photo to the public. It made one of Daisy's friends start to wonder if maybe the police really did have some other intel that she didn't know about.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Like, maybe the DNA at the crime scene matched with someone who wasn't Victor. Maybe the detectives were looking into a different suspect. But the longer she waited, the more she became convinced that her instincts had been right all along. There was no way Victor hadn't done this, she remembered thinking. It just didn't make sense otherwise.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
There was no one else who would have wanted to hurt Daisy. She and her friends considered looking for Victor on their own. They had a few ideas about where he might be hiding, like the motel that he sometimes rented for him and Daisy, or somewhere in the bushes along the LA River. Because even before he went on the run, they told me, it wasn't unusual for him to spend the night on the streets.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Daisy sometimes came with him just to keep him company. That's just the kind of person she was, her friends told me. Ultimately, though, Daisy's friends thought better of their search party. Because what if they did find Victor? What were they going to do then? Or worse, what was he going to do? That's when they began talking about ways to spread the word.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Maybe if other people knew to look out for this guy, then someone would be able to spot him. And if detectives weren't going to put his name and photo out, they thought, then fine, we'll do it ourselves. They told Susie about their plan, and she gave them her blessing. She told them, do whatever it takes to find him. Next time, on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison, and our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
This episode cites two different studies. One of them is called Whose Lives Matter, which appeared in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. It was published by sociologists at University of Chicago and Stanford University. And it was previously reported on by the Marshall Project. You can go read more about that on their website.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And the federal clearance rate data that I mentioned, which breaks down homicide clearance rates by race, was based on a CBS News analysis of the FBI's data. You can read more about it on CBS News' website. Thanks so much for listening.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
the murder and the absence of information around it, it created this void, this panic, this paranoia, a fear that everyone was a suspect, including maybe even Wendy and her neighbor. But this idea that just anybody was a suspect, it wasn't something that Daisy's mother or her friends subscribed to. They were pretty sure they knew exactly who had committed this murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The question was, why hadn't he been arrested yet? I'm Jen Swan, from London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer, Paris Hilton. This is My Friend Daisy, Episode 4, Another Death in Compton. The night that Daisy slipped out of the house and never came home, her mother, Susie, noticed something that concerned her. It was a message on Daisy's phone from her ex-boyfriend, Victor Sosa.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Normally, Susie told me, she would never read her daughter's text messages. But she happened to see it pop up while she was looking in Daisy's direction. It contained just five words. I've got something for you. After Daisy got this message, she got up, she hugged her mother and her grandmother, and she told them she'd be right back.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
She opened the screen door and walked down the steps of the second floor apartment. Susie wasn't happy about it, but she felt she couldn't say anything. Daisy was technically an adult, even if she was also still a teenager. And if Susie's past experiences had taught her anything, it was that the more you tell a teenager not to do something, the more they want to do it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Besides, Susie had no reason to suspect that Daisy wasn't going to come right back. She'd left her phone and her wallet inside the house. When Daisy didn't come right back, Susie figured she'd spent the night with Victor. It was disappointing, but maybe not surprising. Old habits are hard to break.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
When Susie identified her daughter's body the next day, the detectives asked her a series of questions. Who did she hang out with? Did she have a boyfriend? That's when Susie told them about Victor. She told me that she called the lead detective, Ray Lugo, nearly every single day to ask for updates. And to his credit, he always answered, she said. When he didn't, he called back right away.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
But even when she got him on the line, Susie said, Lugo didn't give her much information. He was empathetic, but evasive. The investigation was ongoing, and he couldn't say much. All he could say was that he and his partner, Sanchez, were working the case, following leads, conducting interviews, and that they couldn't just arrest someone without evidence.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Susie tried to be patient, to stay positive, which meant staying busy. A week after Daisy's murder, she went back to work. She needed to be away from the apartment that had become indistinguishable from the crime scene. And she didn't want to deal with running into her neighbors, with being gossiped about, or worse, in her eyes, being pitied. She knew everybody probably had a million questions.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's Wendy again. When I met with Wendy outside of a grocery store near Compton, almost exactly three years had gone by since Daisy's murder. A lot had happened in Wendy's life in those three years.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Her oldest daughter had recently turned 18, which meant that Wendy now had this new knowledge, this new experience of how difficult it is to raise a daughter that age. And it gave her this new perspective on what Susie was going through.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's what Daisy's grandfather thought, too. That Daisy had gone to see Victor the night she left the apartment. The night of February 22nd, 2021. Daisy and her mother and her grandmother had been in the living room. They were sitting on the couch watching television. Juan was sitting in a chair across from them, and he was the only one with a view of the window.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And around 10.30 p.m., he saw something that nobody else saw. It was something moving outside. It was dark out, and he wasn't totally sure what he saw. Like, maybe it was a shadow, or maybe it was nothing. So he decided not to say anything. Everyone was having a good time and he didn't want to ruin the mood. But then he saw it again.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He couldn't tell who it was because they were wearing a beanie and a hood and a mask over their face. The only thing that he could make out was their eyes. And for a brief moment, he stared directly into them. And then, almost as soon as they made eye contact, this person vanished. When the detectives questioned Juan, he told this story to them, and they asked him to come down to the station.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They wanted him to look at some photographs to tell them if he recognized the person he saw in the window that night. Juan remembered being nervous. He'd never done anything like this before. But if it would help the investigation, then he was willing to do it. He showed up to the homicide bureau and he was instructed to sit down at a table and look at six photographs.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Each photograph showed a different man's face and each of these men looked a little like the suspect, which was Victor. Victor's photo was included among these six. The other five were what's known as fillers. So these are people that the police know were not at the crime scene. Often that's because these fillers are photos of incarcerated people.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They're the booking photos, and they're now in a police database. So this method is what cops call a six-pack. It's basically a modern-day version of a police lineup. You've probably seen this in movies or TV shows where, you know, the suspect and a bunch of people who sort of resemble the suspect are put in a room and the witness has to say, like, that's the guy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Well, that kind of thing never really happens anymore, at least not in person. Now it's all done through photographs. And there's a lot of debate about whether this is actually effective or ethical. Some critics say that it can lead to false arrests and convictions. That's actually one of the reasons why, in California, detectives are not allowed to do six-packs on their own cases.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The news of Daisy's murder rattled everyone at her apartment complex. There was no making sense of what had happened there. So much of it just didn't add up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They're typically presented by detectives who aren't involved in the investigation. It's intended to prevent them from pressuring a witness, even inadvertently, to select the person they know is the suspect. It's a really imperfect process, to say the least. But detectives sometimes rely on it when they don't have much else to go off. It can help them get an arrest warrant. So here was Juan.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He's sitting in this room. There's probably a fluorescent light buzzing overhead, and he's staring down at these six photographs in front of him. He recognized Victor's photo. He pointed him out to detectives, and he told them, this is Daisy's ex-boyfriend. This is the person who killed her. But here's the thing. Juan was not brought into the station to identify Daisy's ex.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He was asked something really specific. He was asked, who was the person you'd seen outside the window that night? Juan had always assumed that this person was Victor. But now, sitting in that room, he realized he wasn't sure.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Juan said that whenever Victor came around, he always waited for Daisy downstairs on the ground floor of the apartment building. He never climbed the stairs and walked up the landing of the second floor unit. He never peered in the window. It was like he wanted to avoid all contact with Daisy's family. And in the moment, this made Juan doubt himself. He studied the photos in front of him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He looked at Victor's photo. And then he looked at all the others. He scanned each of the men's faces, one after the other. He looked into their eyes and studied their bone structure. He noticed their blemishes, the shapes of their scars, the length of their eyelashes, and he wondered, did one of these men kill my granddaughter?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Eventually, after what felt like hours of staring, of searching, trying to access some deep part of his memory, he decided that one of the faces staring back at him did look like the person he saw in the window that night. The eyes he saw peeking out from above the mask. He told detectives that this was him. This was the killer. But that couldn't have been true.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Because the man that Juan picked was a filler. There was one other person who reported seeing the suspect at the apartment complex the night of February 22nd. And that person was Jeffrey, Wendy's son. He'd been walking home from his cousin's apartment on the other side of the complex. That's when he saw Daisy. She was laying down between two buildings.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's Wendy Aldivia. She used to live in Daisy's apartment complex. And her mother actually still lived there at the time of Daisy's death. She rented the unit right below Daisy's family. Wendy was deeply invested in getting justice for Daisy. It wasn't just because she'd known Daisy since Daisy was a little girl.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And there was someone standing over her, pacing back and forth. Jeffrey had assumed that this person was Victor because, you know, he'd seen Victor hanging around with Daisy before at the apartment complex. But when Jeffrey was asked to look at the six photos, the photo of Victor and the five fillers, he, like Juan, chose a photo that was not Victor's.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Detectives had struck out on the six-pack. Neither of their witnesses had been able to identify the suspect, which to them either meant that Victor hadn't done it or that it would be that much harder to arrest him if he had. That must have been frustrating.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But then, during that bus ride, Daisy confided a little more.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Lolly was concerned, but she knew that Daisy had a close circle of friends at her high school, a big support system. What she didn't know is that she was one of the few people, maybe even the only one, who Daisy talked about her relationship with. Maybe, in hindsight, it made a strange sort of sense.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But Lali didn't know many of the details, and the truth of what was really going on. It was so much worse than she could have imagined.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
One night, during the summer before Daisy's senior year of high school, her grandfather, Juan de la O, was asleep on the couch. Daisy's younger brother began screaming at him to wake up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I first reached out to Lali on TikTok. Her profile is filled with funny, candid videos. Nothing too edited, nothing too trendy. Just snippets of everyday life. A friend walking around with a paper bag over her head. Soccer teammates banging on plastic bottles to make an ASMR drumbeat. Lali and I met up at a coffee shop in Huntington Park.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She got a call from her youngest son and heard him shouting. He hit her. He hit her with a skateboard. When Susie got to the apartment complex, she saw blood on the ground. But Daisy was nowhere to be found. She'd taken off running, just like Victor. To Susie, it seemed like Daisy was embarrassed. Embarrassed that her younger brother had witnessed what had happened.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She was such a mature, rough girl, Susie told me. That for her, that was embarrassing that she was getting hit by this person. Daisy's mother and her grandfather and her little brother began running after Daisy and Victor, chasing them down the street. Victor eventually got away. When they caught up with Daisy, she was distraught.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
The public spectacle of her family chasing her and her boyfriend down the street, it probably added to her embarrassment. And the last thing she wanted to do was to talk about what had happened, or even to seek treatment for it. Susie pleaded with her daughter. She wanted to see the wound on her head, but Daisy wouldn't show her. She was covering it with a hat. You need stitches, Susie told her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But Daisy did not want to go to the hospital. It seemed like she was afraid of reporting the assault, afraid of drawing even more attention to her injury and what that might mean for her relationship. Finally, Susie made a promise. She told her daughter that she wouldn't call the police. She was bluffing. She had actually already called the police.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Problem was, the police never showed up, she told me. Daisy finally agreed to let her mother take her to the emergency room. But when they got there, Susie told me, Daisy insisted to the medical staff that nothing had happened. No assault had taken place. California law requires registered nurses to make a report any time they suspect a patient has been injured as a result of abuse.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And that's regardless of whether the patient consents to it. So it's unclear why a report was not taken. But because there was no report made, this account of alleged assault isn't based on any sort of official record. It's based on my interviews with Daisy's mother, her grandfather, and her youngest brother, who confirmed to me that he witnessed it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Jeffrey, the teenager whose grandmother lived in the building, also witnessed the attack, according to his mother. After Daisy got stitched up at the hospital, Susie went to the L.A. County Sheriff's Station in Compton. Since the hospital wouldn't file a police report, she figured she'd go to the police herself. But Susie said they told her, quote, the same crap.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
They can't make a report if the victim doesn't come forward. Susie was baffled. Her daughter was a minor, and she'd been injured so badly that she needed stitches. Wasn't that enough to file a police report? Susie was not willing to take no for an answer. She went to a different law enforcement agency, the Huntington Park Police Department, in the city where Daisy attended high school.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But again, she said, she was turned away. The police department declined to file a report or press charges without the cooperation of the victim. I asked the Huntington Park Police Department about this. A media spokesperson said they don't comment on incidents involving minors. But a lieutenant did tell me that this kind of situation, quote, it's not really spelled out in a policy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's a working-class suburb just a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles. We sat at an outdoor table on Pacific Boulevard, the main shopping district. It's filled with signs in Spanish advertising tax lawyers and passport photos. There are huge, glittery boutiques that sell tuxedos and princess-like quinceañera dresses.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
He described it as a gray area, meaning if a parent comes in to report a crime against their child, and the child doesn't want to provide a statement, police might not be able to gather information for a police report. When Daisy returned in the fall for her senior year of high school, she was called into the principal's office.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
When she got there, school administrators wanted to ask her about the alleged assault. She said she didn't know what they were talking about. And that's when, according to Susie, Daisy was told that they had already interviewed her younger brother. And he said the attack did happen. Was she calling her brother a liar? This confrontation, it was all a setup. It had been masterminded by Susie.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She told me that she had approached school administrators for help in making a record of the alleged assault. These administrators did not comment on or corroborate this incident, citing student confidentiality. According to Susie, her daughter cracked under the pressure. She told them, no, my brother is not a liar and yes, what he says did happen.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Victor was banned from entering the campus as a result, Susie told me, and she also banned him from entering her home. And it was roughly around this time, maybe just a few weeks earlier, that Victor posted this really cryptic image on Instagram. It was this old school tattoo style illustration of this guy holding two different theater masks. Maybe you've seen this kind of thing.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's like a happy mask in one hand and a sad mask in the other. And there's this text across it that says, smile now, cry later. And then the caption says, not allowed to see my girlfriend no more. And then there's this hand clapping emoji and an hourglass emoji. The whole thing is really ominous. Like, was it some kind of threat of time running out?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's impossible to know for sure what he meant by this. And it's also impossible to know how exactly this whole experience affected Daisy. It had to have been incredibly difficult. And it seems like at that point, you know, she was already struggling with this relationship, with whether to stay, how to go. And I just wonder, is this the thing that made her see clearly, gravely, I need to get out?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But getting out of a bad relationship takes time. In Daisy's case, it happened about two and a half years after the alleged assault with the skateboard. It was early 2021. We were driving. Susie told me. She was like, by the way, I broke up with what's-his-face. Susie told me that Daisy didn't even like to mention Victor by name because she knew her mother disliked him so much.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Inside, Susie said she was jumping up and down at this news. But she didn't want to show Daisy how excited she was. Teenagers are weird, Susie said. The more you tell them not to do something, the more they want to do it, and vice versa. So Susie kept driving. She tried her best to hide her smile and act casual. She kept her hands on the steering wheel. She looked straight ahead.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
The businesses here cater to a population of mostly immigrants, like Lolly's family. They're from Tabasco, Mexico, and Daisy's family back when they lived here. They're from Mexico City. Daisy and Lolly bonded instantly. They had the kind of closeness where they could spend hours together, sometimes without even saying a word.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And besides, it wasn't the first time that Daisy and Victor had broken up. But something about this time felt different. More real. More final. Maybe it was the fact that Daisy seemed like she had so many more options in her life now. She'd made friends in her college classes. She'd gotten a job at CVS. And she had co-workers that she really liked.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
There was something else that Daisy did that silently suggested this breakup was the real thing. She deleted all of her photos of Victor on Instagram. One of Daisy's friends told me that she clocked this immediately. Daisy never said a word to her about the breakup. She didn't need to. Her social media said it all. Her and Victor were over.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
The oldest remaining post on Daisy's grid, after she deleted everything else, was a selfie. It was posted on February 3rd, 2021, which was roughly around the time she broke up with Victor. The photo didn't show her face, but it did show a purple key hanging from a chain around her neck, a moon and bat tattoo on her clavicle. A spider web inked across her shoulder. The caption?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
On its way to happiness. At the time that she posted this image and caption, it was winter break at East LA College. But Daisy was not taking a break. She was enrolled in a course called Management for Small Business Entrepreneurship. In other words, she was on her grind. She wanted to own her own salon one day, and this was one step along the way. And this class was intense.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
What was normally four months of instruction was crammed into just five weeks.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
That's Frank Aguirre. He's the chair of East L.A. College's business administration program. He's got dark, slicked-back hair, and he wore a polo shirt printed with the college's mascot, a husky.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Frank didn't get to know Daisy well. This class was only five weeks long. And it was also completely online. This was still less than a year into the pandemic, so that was the norm. But he did try to get to know all of his students, to understand their reasoning for taking his class.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And one way that he did that was by asking them all to submit a questionnaire, to tell him about their background and interests, to name something unique about themselves. Of course, I wanted to know what Daisy had written in hers.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But there were times when Lolly wondered if there was more going on with Daisy than she let on.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I stared at this photo of this 19-year-old woman with so many dreams. So much life ahead of her. I thought about how the world was just beginning to open itself up to her. To become so much bigger. I thought about how she had recently made this big decision. To leave a partner who, by many accounts, had been abusive to her. And how difficult that must have been.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I thought about the injustice of it all. Just three weeks after this class ended, her life would be taken from her. And to a lot of people who knew Daisy, it seemed like the cops were willing to let her case go cold. Not if they could help it. Next time on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison, and our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
This idea that Daisy always put on a smile, no matter what. It was something that came up a lot when I spoke to her friends.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Lolly and Daisy drifted apart in high school. Lolly went to one school, Daisy to another. But Daisy always stayed on Lolly's mind.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And this encounter, it shed light on Daisy's inner life, on one of the difficult things that she was struggling with in the years after they lost touch. It still haunts Lolly today.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I'm Jen Swan from London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer, Paris Hilton. This is My Friend Daisy, Episode 3. Smile now, cry later.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Valerie Arellano was two grades above Daisy. She was a sophomore in high school when Daisy was in the eighth grade.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's possible that the two might never have met if Valerie's best friend didn't end up getting pregnant. The father was Daisy's older brother.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
When the baby was born in the fall of 2015, Daisy embraced being an aunt. Later, she would even get a tattoo of the baby's name. Daisy adored the baby's mother, too. She got a septum ring just like her and started dyeing her hair like her, too.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
This episode contains descriptions of intimate partner violence. Please listen with care.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I'm laughing because I can relate. My hair was also fried in high school. Honestly, my brain was probably a little fried too, from all the bleach I put on my head, followed by clumps of Manic Panic and neon shades.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Valerie's in her mid-20s with short curly bangs and thick hair that when we met, she wore in two braids. I had messaged Valerie on Facebook after noticing that she donated to the GoFundMe that Daisy's mother had started to help with her funeral costs. Valerie's Facebook page is like a community bulletin board. She often reposts flyers about missing people and lost pets.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
PSA is about shelter animals that need homes. And in person, she was just as sensitive and caring as her online profile suggested. A few years back, she told me, she started studying sociology at Cal State LA because she wanted to work in homeless services. Then she got disillusioned and switched over to art education.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She wants to get her teaching credential someday, to work in a field where she can really have an impact and make a difference. We sat at a picnic table outside the Civic Center in Huntington Park. That's where Valerie grew up and where she still lives. And she told me about the first time she met Daisy, about how she watched as Daisy's style and musical tastes began to evolve.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
With her tough exterior, Daisy sometimes gave off the air of someone who was unfazed, self-assured. But underneath it all, she was going through a lot. It seems like she was probably dealing with a lot of uncertainty. Her parents were getting a divorce after nearly two decades of marriage. It was finalized in the summer of 2017.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And based on what I've heard from Daisy's mother, Susie, it must have been hard on Daisy. I haven't been able to reach her father. I asked his father, Juan de la O, to help us get in touch. I never heard back. But from what Susie told me, Daisy used to be very close with her father. A daddy's girl is how she put it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She was really like this with her dad, she told me, crossing her index and middle fingers together. But after the split, Susie and Daisy got a lot closer. They ended up moving in with Daisy's grandparents in Compton. It was a tight squeeze, but it was at least familiar. They'd all lived there for a time when Daisy and her siblings were younger.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Susie told me that in order to maintain a sense of normalcy, she decided not to take her kids out of the schools they were already enrolled in. Now, Daisy had to commute to school from a different city. Huntington Park was a straight shot on the bus, eight miles north on Long Beach Boulevard until it turned into Pacific. The drive took a half hour by car or sometimes an hour on public transit.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's hard to imagine this was an easy transition. Daisy was living far from her friends, her school, her community. And now she had to navigate a new living arrangement with extended family members she didn't always get along with. But around this time, when Daisy was a sophomore in high school, she began dating somebody that seemed to bring her comfort, at least in the beginning.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
When she introduced her mother to her boyfriend, she said that he was 17, just two years older than she was. And at first, Susie had no reason to doubt that. Victor Sosa looked like your average teenage skateboarder. He'd carry a skateboard with him wherever he went. He had thick eyebrows and a thin mustache. He sometimes grew his dark, wavy hair past his shoulders.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But the thing that everybody noticed about him was his earlobes. They'd been stretched and gauged with jewelry. It looked like big black discs. His appearance didn't bother Susie. She was actually suspicious of him for another reason. He was too quiet, she told me. And pretty soon, she began to notice things about him that made her suspect he was a lot older than 17.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I saw tattoos on him, she told me. A lot of tattoos. And I'm like, how old is he for real? Susie would later discover that her daughter had lied to her about her boyfriend's age. He was already 21 when Daisy was 15. Susie had always felt like she and her daughter were on a team. But after Victor came into the picture, she no longer felt that way. It seemed like everything had changed.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Susie had been working long hours to make ends meet. She was seeing less and less of her daughter. And when they did hang out, Daisy never wanted to talk about Victor, Susie told me. A number of Daisy's friends told me the same thing. That Victor was a topic that was always off limits. They didn't know much about him, and they weren't even really sure how the two of them met.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But they knew better than to ask about it. When they did, Daisy sometimes told them that he wasn't worth talking about. But Victor clearly didn't feel that way about Daisy. It was like he wanted the whole world to know about his relationship. Because on Instagram, he filled his grid with photos of her... Daisy with her hair bleached blonde and then dyed jack-o'-lantern orange.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Daisy and fishnets climbing a fence. Daisy and fishnets on a beach. Daisy in an antique shop. A little yellow Daisy propped in the buttonhole of her jean jacket. His Instagram contained a few photos of himself, too. There was one photo that showed off his tattoos. On his leg, an image of Jason, the killer from Friday the 13th. Two blades arranged like crossbones under a hockey mask.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Across his abdomen, an outline of the Grim Reaper. It seemed like he had a thing for horror movies, right down to the clothes he wore. He even sometimes dressed like Freddy Krueger in a red striped sweater and bowler hat. His look sometimes freaked people out. Like Jose Tejas, the apartment manager at Daisy's building. He'd sometimes see Victor hanging around the apartment complex with Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And he was not into it. He dressed in all black, like a shadow, Jose said. Then he compared Victor to The Undertaker, the wrestler who entered the ring in a black leather trench coat and top hat. Daisy's style had become a little theatrical, too. Her hair was cut short and asymmetrical, and her makeup was dark and bold. She looked a little like the 1980s punk singer, Susie Sue.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
By her junior year of high school, she had changed her look so much that Lolly, her friend from middle school, had to do a double take when she spotted Daisy on the bus.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She and Daisy hadn't seen each other in years, and Lolly wasn't even sure if it was really Daisy she was seeing.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Lali and Daisy had a lot to catch up on. And they only had the length of a bus ride to do it. Lali didn't want to waste any time. So she went straight to the big questions.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Junior high was more than a decade ago for Lolly. She's in her early 20s now. She's got wavy brown hair parted down the middle. And on the day that we met, she wore a Whitney Houston T-shirt. She wants to be a nurse someday, delivering babies. But for the time being, she delivers something else. Food from local restaurants. That's in between classes at East LA College.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
To Lolly, it sounded like a lot of high school relationships, including her own, full of drama, insecurity, and intensity.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Imagine, you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. And I was like, what? Like, it was him? I was like, oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
I'm a journalist in Los Angeles and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. Es ist die Geschichte, wie und warum eine Gruppe von Teenagern sich auf Social Media konzentriert, um ihre Freundin als Mörder hinzutragen. Das ist ihre Geschichte. Das ist mein Freund Daisy. Musik Musik Musik Musik Musik
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
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Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.